The rules
● Your Character should walk from left to right →
● Characters must be animated against a white background.
● The loop should start and end in the centre of the frame – and your character should not leave or interact with the edges of the frame.
● As long as your character animation loops back to its primary pose, whatever happens during your loop – how many frames it takes, how many legs are involved, any creative derailments or escalations – it’s all completely up to you, your skills and your imagination…

(the above GIF by the great Phillustration is an almost perfect example – apart from the background not being white...)

More rules?
● Entries must be uploaded as a GIF (minimum dimension 800 x 800 px, max file size 15MB) to home.pictoplasma.com (formerly known as Pictofolio – sign up for a FREE account, or log in with former Pictofolio password).
● To be considered, entries must include the hashtag #WalkWithCharacter in the about section.
● You can enter as many unique walk cycles as you desire.
● The deadline for entries is January 12th, 2024.

Should you require a reference for your walk cycle, find your starting point with this basic template or this slightly more baroque template – created courteously for this call by BARBAR Studio.

However, of course you are more than welcome to ignore all vanilla guides, break established rules, re-invent the craft and forever disrupt the animation industry!

What else?
Apart from selected entries being proudly featured on Pictoplasma and our social media pages, a hand-picked crop will join together into an animated character stampede at the 20th Pictoplasma Berlin Festival, where they’re expected to parade and show off their attitude.

🏁 OK let’s gooooo … 🏁