Wolves Sliding Jump Animation

Sliding jump animations for both of the wolves have reached a decent stage. With these animations I was trying to emphasize the gracefulness and lightness of the good wolf. He jumps high in the air and lands dynamically. For the evil wolf I was emphasizing his heavy mass and an ice-like materiality. Therefore, as he lands down, there is a notable sliding and anticipatory crouching.

Landing and Sliding Jump animation

Lately I’m working on Good wolfs landing and sliding jump animations. These are examples of first pass animation, which later will be further defined and adjusted to the scenes.

There were no longer any reference images from Muybridge, therefore I have looked for some videos on youtube and print-screened some key frames to inform my animating.

I am aware that the sliding jump animation seems to rely on translate keyframing, meaning the body seems stiff. I'll revisit this one after some time off, as I found it is worth animating back again with a fresh eye.

Trotting and Jumping Quadruped Animation

Here is another video of refined evil wolf run cycle. I've referenced oxes this time too so to add the heavyness in the run cycle. Also, for the good wolf I'm working on jump and flying animation

Wolves Run Cycle Animation

The animated sequence presents both wolves trotting. I’ve laid out the base animation which will be pulled for scenes. The second pass of animation will be done once they are put within the environment and the particular situation. The key achievement in these sequences are the proper use of the animation handles so there is no twitching anymore. Also and again, Muybridge’s photo sequence of dog run cycles were invaluable reference source.

Good Wolf's Walkcycle Test 1

This is today's first attempt in animating the basic quadruped walk cycle. It is not stylized to suit the character type, I focused on basics first.. .which actually were/are quite hard to get . I have followed Williams' Animator's Survival Kit.



7 hours of animating and I have a pain filled walkcycle. At the moment it looks like the wolf is walking rather in pain. :D But it really helps as a starting point to spot the problems and areas of focus. All in all, this 1 minute long animation is a luxury to focus on quality instead of the quantity, which was the case in 4 minute long Ivan the Bird animation. I find that after this exercise I’m in a much better position for the future attempts. For example, there is way too much action in the upper spine (neck area). Also, there are some problems, which I guess are coming from the rig: legs twitch at times.

Also, as I was animating other problems became evident and I attempted to fix them, such as skinning problems, or shape deformations in legs particularly ( I now have created an overall blend shape sitting on top of all the other ones, so that geometry could be easily altered from scene to scene if needed )

So… 6 seconds of arguably crappy animation, but it doesn’t feel like a loss today. And hopefully during this week's time there will be those better animations.