Week 1+2: Quadruped Locomotion

Our first task for this module was to pick a four-legged (quadrupedal) animal, and make an animated walkcycle, then a runcycle, and the transition between the two. I have already done quite many walk- and runcycles with horses, dogs and cats, so I wanted to challenge myself and do something I hadn't done before. I chose to do an otter, because I'm really fascinated and charmed by their clumsy, short-legged gait. However before jumping into the animating process, we were asked to look into quadruped anatomy and spend 45 minutes drawing a canine skeleton. Here's my drawing;

I moved on to do research more relevant to my specific animation. An otters skeleton is more adapted to a marine lifestyle, which in broad terms means long, flexible body, short legs and a big powerful tail. With this in mind I did some observational sketches.

I was finding it a little bit difficult to find good reference material for otters, so I had to look at several pictures when sketching them. Finding good footage of a walking otter was even harder, as you rarely see these eager mustelids move at a constant pace. After a look around on youtube for good material, I finally found a couple of helpful videos. One video ended up being my primary source of reference, since it was one of the few videos which had both walking, running and the transition between the two, and it was filmed from the side most of the time:

Next on the schedule was making a walk-cycle diagram. I did this quite quickly, just to get an overview of when each foot is lifted, how long they stay in the air and when they touch the ground, etc. 

I now felt ready to start animating! I usually prefer working with pencil on paper, but I decided to use Adobe Flash CS5 instead, since that means I can test and make corrections to the cycle much easier. 

After a couple of days animating, I had a sketch ready. 

I started out with the walkcycle, which I think works. It looks very correct, but is then again very static and mechanic. It's a good base but I'm going to have to re-work it. I'm very pleased with the runcycle, it looks much more alive and I think I captured the gait quite well. I'm also happy with the transitions between the paces, I especially found animating the walk to run-transition very confusing and challenging, but I'm very happy with how it ended up looking. I didn't get to finish the stopping-animation, which at this stage was just keyframes. I really wanted to finish this animation so it looks nice and presentable, so after finishing the motion, I started making a clean line-art. I ended up with a video that looks a lot better, reads better and I even added a little bit of personal stylization.