Last week we were given our new practical module, you guessed it, animals and creatures. Initially this feels as if it has both advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, the advantages compared to previous topics are that there will be less technical hiccups as less rigging and less lip-sync will be employed. This should enable far more time devoted to actual animation, rather than new learning curves, which I am very happy about. The disadvantages are that there are more feet 🙂 Good walk cycles are a tricky thing to master, with animals it’s going to be a new body of knowledge dealing with more limbs, complicated anatomy and physiognomy.
Our first task is to do a horse walk-cycle. I found the tutorial in Richard William’s great book, The Animators Survival Kit to be the best, the video we followed went somewhat awry but the book images became a sound outcome. It took a bit of fiddling with the feet to stop them sliding, the LockToWorld tool was indispensable for sticking them to the floor, after I’d moved the main controller. After that it was a relatively straightforward case of implementing the post-infinity cycles, making sure the loop was tight and a quick render:
