PHASES OF MOVEMENT OF A WALK.
Six phases complete a step.
As a better understanding of the preceding the fact should be grasped that while one limb, the right we will say, is assuming a certain position during a step, in the next step it is the turn of the other limb, the left, to assume this particular position. And again in this second step, the right limb takes the corresponding position that the other limb had in the first step. There are always, in a walk, two sets of drawings, used alternately. Any particular silhouette in one set has its identical silhouette in the other set, but the attitudes of the limbs are reversed. To explain by an example: In the drawing of one middle position, the right leg supports the body and the left is flexed, in its coincidental drawing, it is the left that supports the body and the right is flexed. (See 2 and 3+, of engraving on page [113].)
From this it can be seen that the two sets of drawings differ only in the details within their general contours. These details will be such markings as drapery folds, stripes on trousers, indications of the right and the left foot by little items like buttons on boots. Heeding and taking the trouble to mark little details like these add to the value of a screen image.
One of the most difficult actions to depict in this art is that which the animator calls a perspective walk. By this term he means a walk in which the figure is either coming diagonally, more or less, toward the front of the picture or going away from it toward the horizon. It is obvious that according to the rules of perspective, in coming forward the figure gets larger and larger, and in travelling in the opposite direction it gets smaller and smaller. To do this successfully is not easy. Only after a worker has had a great deal of experience in the art is he able to draw such a movement easily.
A PERSPECTIVE WALK.
The constant changing sizes of the figures and getting them within the perspective lines in a graduated series are perplexing enough matters. But this is not all. There is the problem of the foreshortened views as the limbs are beheld perspectively. Imagine, for instance, an arm pointing toward the spectator in a foreshortened view. Every artist would have his own individual way of drawing this. Those with a natural feeling for form and understanding anatomy solve problems of this kind by methods for which it is impossible to give any recipe. Some would start with preliminary construction lines that have the appearance of columnar solids in perspective, while others scribble and fumble around until they find the outlines that they want.
