Part 1: Horses

To begin with we looked at a small skeleton of a four legged creature as a way to help us familiarise ourselves with how quadruped animals are structured.

After studying the creature for a short while I drew a quick sketch of the skeleton, hoping it will give me an understanding as to how quadrupeds are built and a basic idea of how they might move.

Skeleton Sketch

I then went on to attempting to animate a horse walk cycle. I was able to find some of Eadweard Muybridge's original animal movement photos, edited into full working videos, dating all the way back to the 1870's. Using these I was able to make my very first Horse walk cycle.

Used from http://sillydragon.com/muybridge/Plate_0576.html

Shot from my Horse Walk Cycle

After animating the walk cycle and being reasonably pleased with it, I moved onto the next step and started looking for a good piece of Muybridge footage that I could use for a run cycle.

http://sillydragon.com/muybridge/Plate_0632.html

Shot from my Horse Run Cycle

I flipped the image using photoshop as I found after animating the walk cycle that I was more accustomed to animating a horse facing right and began working on the run cycle. I decided to spend less time on the shading and details as the motion is considered more important for this brief. I found that it in fact works better than the walk cycle I had made as it looks more "complete".

Since shooting the original photos I have gone back to edit them using After Effects as a way to reduce the "click" when the frames loop. This has worked mostly but the walk cycle still has a couple of issues that I was unable to resolve due to time restraints.