2D walk cycle
The prompt “A 2D hand-drawn cartoon character, a round orange fox wearing a blue scarf, performs a looping walk cycle in strict side view, walking in place on a plain light background. Static camera, flat colors, clean black outlines, at least two full strides visible.”
The first exercise every animator learns. Feet must plant without sliding, every stride must take the same time, the body must rise and fall with each step and the last frame must lead back into the first, while the character stays on model.
- Models tested
- 15
- Top score
- 5.00 4 models tied
- Average
- 4.60
- Lowest
- 3.63 MiniMax Hailuo 02
Every model, same prompt
The clips on screen play together from the first frame, muted. Open one for sound, controls and our notes.
MiniMax H3
MiniMaxA neat four-legged walk in place in side view, with an even stride, the legs always in frame and no change to the design.
Google Gemini Omni
GoogleA clean four-legged walk in side view with an even rhythm, the head bobbing with each step and the scarf trailing. Design unchanged from start to end.
Runway Gen-4.5
RunwayA four-legged side-view walk in place with an even rhythm, the legs always in frame and a design that holds throughout.
Kling 3.0
KuaishouClean side-view walk in place: feet plant, the body rises and falls on each step, arms swing against the legs, and the design holds for all 8 seconds.
Wan 3.0
AlibabaA clear two-legged walk in place with arm swing, a contact shadow and an even rhythm, in three-quarter view rather than strict side view.
Vivix W1
VivixAn even four-legged walk in place in side view with a stable design. The fur has a painted texture rather than the flat colour asked for.
Seedance 2.0
ByteDanceAn even two-legged walk in place with arm swing and a stable design. The character reads more like a cat than a fox.
Google Veo 3.1
GoogleA readable two-legged walk with arm swing and a clean, consistent design, though in three-quarter view rather than strict side view and drifting slowly to the right.
Grok Video
xAIA steady, even cycle with the legs always in frame, but it is a bounding trot rather than a walk. The design never changes.
FLUX 3
Black Forest LabsSide view and a stable design, but the legs only shuffle in very short steps under a body that barely moves, and the legs blur together at moments.
Kling 3.0 Turbo
KuaishouA small, steady walk in place with alternating steps and a stable design. The character fills little of the frame and the strides are short, so the cycle is hard to read.
Kling 4.0
KuaishouThe fox walks in place in side view, but the tail snaps between different poses every half second and the legs tangle into each other at the contact frames.
PixVerse v5.5
PixVerseThe walk itself is even, but the fox is drawn with two tails, one on each side of the body, in every frame, and the view is three-quarter rather than side.
Seedance 2.5
ByteDanceThe fox is framed so tightly that its legs are cut off by the bottom of the frame for the whole clip, so the walk cycle itself is never visible. Head and scarf stay on model.
MiniMax Hailuo 02
MiniMaxStarts as a walk but the fox travels across the frame and at about 4.8 seconds turns round to face the camera and then walks the other way, so the side-view cycle breaks. The clip is 6 seconds long.
Ranked by our blind vision-model judge; models with the same score share a position. Read how we test.