Animating Creatures Comfortably

Animal Movement Breakdowns Here are a few wonderfully informative extracts from Richard Williams Animator Survival Kit simplifying animating animal locomotion.  If you don't have the book yet go get it, it is a must have for every animator.          What the Spine has to Offer? While touched on a little in the horses gallop I feel Richard Williams doesn't really highlight just how much of an effect the spine has in an animals locomotion. Unlike people on the move animals spines can undergo some significant compression and stretching, this varies widely depending on the species in question and has real influence in how believable your animation is. Below are two animals on different ends of the flexible spectrum, despite both having similar timings and footfall patterns (Albeit a longer period of suspension in the lighter hound) the horse and dog have significant differences in the squash and stretch of their bodies from the differing spinal flexibility.

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Eadward Muybridge "The Father of Motion Picture" 1830-1904 was the first person to record animals and  peoples movements in series of photographs. Initially Muybridge set out to end the age old debate of  where a horses  legs are placed during a trot and later gallops also.   (Muybridge Image of a horse galloping) These inital finding were published in the book The Horse In Motion (Full name of the text way to long to type in entirety) and proved so revealing (In many ways the foundation for gait analysis) that Muybridge went on to take some  100,000 photos of animals  and people engaging in acts of locomotion.  (Excerpt From The Horse In Motion) Before Muybridges photographic evidence of how animals truly move at speed many artistic depictions showed all four  limbs outstretched at once. This look  rather ridiculous now but in the book examples are given of the ''mythical gallop'' extracted from the  Elementary Drawing Books used in schoo

To start things off here is an invaluable resource for any animator looking to get there head round quadruped locomotion. The document linked down below allows an animator just making there first steps into animating four legged creatures to begin to understand the subtleties of four legged movement. The Writer, Dr. Sumida frequently consults with many animation studios from Disney to DreamWorks so his understanding of both animation and the science of animal movement proves invaluable in bridging the gap between the two areas of study. Here are a few excerpts from the pdf, while I strongly suggest you give the whole thing a read these two pages should already offer some insight into the wonderful world of quadruped locomotion. I chose to include a page comparing a trot to a gallop to help illustrate just how varied four legged movement can be. Too often it seems inexperienced animators assume the front and back legs move in a similar fashion to our own. This can result in v