walk workflow(upper body, hips)

So my feet are done. My root has its up and down. What do I do next?
Well the root is my base of operations and key to everythings timing, so lets go there. We need that nice figure 8 I was talking about earlier to show this guy has weight. So when he steps on one foot the weight comes over to it cause that foot is taking the weight, when he steps on the next, it goes over there.

So if frame one the left foot is contacting, we know the weight needs to be over there. So I take weight over to the opposite leg, cause it must be coming from there. Set a key on 1 and 33, make the exact opposite on frame 17. You now have your extremes. You can play with the extremes from here if you want more add it if you have to much make it less. Make these poses really work before we start animating it more. So here is an image of my final root curves. Notice I have my extremes, and two keys in between each extreme. This is for a few reasons.

1. Slow in and slow out. I want to slow into each extreme, and slow out of each extreme.

2.The weight doesn't start to shift over to the leg until the leg has really contacted. So it starts subtley moving over on the heel contact frame. Then once the leg is on the ground it really takes that weight, then as the foot starts rolling forward it prepares to release the weight onto the other foot. So each key is on each frame for a reason. This timing will be used for everything we do on the hips. Which is next.

So the weight shift is done, now the hips need to do there thing. The hips can either lead the leg, or follow the leg, depends on the personality of your walk or your reference. In this walk my hips are leading the leg. So I set my extreme on frame 1 the right foot is contacting, so I rotate my hip forward to point to that leg. Same on 33, opposite on 17. I set an inbetween to help the slow in and out, and thats really it for that part of the hips. The next part is really important. When the leg has the weight, the hip needs to shoot up on that side of the leg to show the leg has the weight of the body on it. This is purely a physics thing. It just has to happen. So once my foot is planted I shoot the hip up from that frame pretty quickly. And hold it there till the next foot plants. You can see that from frame 3 and frame 19 is where all the action happens, cause that is when the foot is planted. Its the motivation for the hip to shoot up. So that is pretty much the hips. You can add some translating or some thrusting back and forth if the cycle calls for it.