Here's a little walkthrough

An exercise in character creation, animation, and seemless looping. This wacky cat is going nowhere fast but still having the time of its life.

Challenge

Walking animations can be pretty darn hard. It takes a lot of thought and consideration to make an animation even resemble the idea of walking. Then add the fact that everything needs to line up just right for a seamless loop and you've got yourself a decent challenge. I just wanted to have fun.

Insight

Apparently I didn't want to go easy on myself with this one. As I was still a fresh beginner with After Effects I wanted to learn as much as I could with respect to effects and looping colours in addition to looping the walking cycle. Also, I had a little fun with the fractal generator.

Solution

This whole excersise was a great lesson in parenting and using pre-compositions. Not only do the leg, arm, and body motions loop, but so does the ground rolling under the character's feet and the colours cycling in the character's eyes.

Walk progress shot in After Effects
Look at Him Go

By design, the walking loop will seemlessly walk forever. Nobody can stop him now.