Week 11: Animal Runs

This week we have been looking at the remaining two animal gates left to study- cantering and galloping. I've never actually animated a four legged animal before so this is my first attempt. Over the holidays I watched the Golden Compass and had the wonderful shot of the polar bear running across the horizon with Lyra in my mind as a benchmark to aim towards- gotta set your standards high!
Anyway here's my first attempt, I'm sure there's lots of problems with it- for one the tail is a bit erratic. It's also not helped much by the low quality skinning but thats something I'm looking past for now.
On a side note if anyone has any good 4 legged rigs I could use for learning purposes please email me as there really isn't many out there. I wanted to try something different than the great dane rig for now as I didn't want to become too comfortable using one rig.
Crits really welcome!


Untitled from Nicola on Vimeo.

On another note at life drawing today we had a wonderful arrangement of an old lady, her daughter and her dog, all clothed mind, apart from the dog of course! It made for a great dynamic and the dog was so fun to draw, I think he loved the attention. Attached is a couple of sketches from the class.





Ok slight update here:
Just a few tweaks after our crit today but some things I need to change:
The head is moving too much,usually the animals will keep the head focused straight ahead- will not use excess energy unless necessary.
There seems to be a wave running through the body that just stops half way- the wave doesn't follow all the way through the back.
Finally need to focus on 'strobing' which is where the legs seem to get mixed up. This is often caused if the legs are too close together/the shapes are quite similar. I have this problem with the back legs so need to tweak this so far. Got some dry erase markers for the screen to help me out with this!


Untitled from Nicola on Vimeo.