Right and wrong ways of walking?
Six-legged walking may wll be the most common walking arangement on Earth, as insects have six legs. Their locomotion is therefore quite well known. There are no large six-legged animal on Earth though. When creatre designers or animators have to produce large six-legged animals for a film, they never seem to think of insects though. Anyway, the most common insect gait is the 'tripod gait', or 'double tripod', explained below, but also shown here. As you can see, it is a straightforward gait. A tripod here consists of a front and hind leg on one side and a middle leg on the other side.

So what do designers come up with when they either do not look at insects or are told to make their creatures look like quadrupeds? They tend to couple the front and middle leg on each side and have them move in unison. These legs are also placed close together. In effect, the gait is then that of a quadruped, as shown in this model (here, a trot). I wrote more about this in a blog post on just that subject. I still think it is a pity, because there is so much more you can do with six legs, as explained below.

Marshwallow walk
The marshwallow is a large Furahan swamp hexapod whose gaits have been well-studied. There is a post on its on the Furaha blog.

As in four-legged animals, the 'walk' gait in six-legged animals is typified by an even spacing of footfalls over a cycle. The difference between phases of the various feet is now one sixth instead of one quarter of a cycle. Again, you can work out the phase of any leg by following the lines connecting it to the left hind leg and add all phases. The result is a stable comfortable gait, in which there are always at least four feet feet on the ground.

Marshwallow in tripod gait
Six-legged animals can also walk with their legs arranged in pairs, but where there were only three ways do to do with four legs, there are many more ways to divide six legs into three pairs. We will not show any of these here; it is not difficult to work them out. Instead, we will show that the legs can also be divided in threesomes, of which there are then two. The simplest variant is shown here: the tripod gait. It is extremely stable and fairly boring. There are always at least three feet on the ground and sometimes six; that's why it is so stable.

Marshwallow in a fast run
There are various symmetrical as well as asymmetrical fast gaits for hexapods. We will show one that is suitable for a relatively slow animal such as the marshwallow. A word to the wise: do not underestimate a marshwallow and never position yourself between them and their favourite pool. Shown here is the 'ripple run', in which the middle legs move in such a way that there is little risk of bumping them into the other ones. Marshwallows can cover quite a bit of ground quickly in this way.