Animating four legged creatures isn’t easy. It’s much more than animating two more legs. There are tons of things to consider, stride, gait, and is it tetrapod or quadruped locomotion? If you want to get your head around animating walks, trots and gallops, animator Felix Sputnik offers what he describes as “the truth about quadruped locomotion”.
How to get from A to B on 4 legs[/pullqoute]
Felix gets right into how animals walk, and how the principles of walk cycles in animation can still apply with some tips for making them look great.
Different animals have different methods for getting around. A dog and a hose will run differently. The walk of an elephant is different from the walk of a cat. This means that there is much more going on. Gait becomes very important. this is why some poor animation ends up looking like two bipedal walk cycles stuck together.
Felix has published tutorials like this before. His last one was a look at creating a skip cycle, which he described as a mix between a walk cycle and run cycle, with every 3rd step taken out.
