Animating The Characters

Week: 22 – 28 November

As the camera tracking phase finished last week, I began animating the characters. I planned to spend 2 weeks for the animation, which is to complete all the basic character movements (walk, run, jump and turning direction) in the first week and integrate the characters into the tracked footages during the second week.

Six-legged with Insect Anatomy

In my current state with the thesis, I already found and understand the basic movement patterns of six-legged insect. There are 2 popular patterns used by most insects which are ‘tripod gait’ that always has 3 feet on the ground during the normal walking, and ‘bipod gait’ for higher movement speed especially running, which always has 2 feet on the ground for every cycle. This tripod and bipod gaits are also applied when the insect turning their body to another direction.

My finding from Tortoise Beetle walking pattern. Dark areas indicate times of contact in frames.

My finding of Tortoise Beetle turning body animation. Dark areas indicate times of contact in frames.

Waternoose character (Monster Inc) walking pattern. Dark areas indicate times of contact in frames.

Waternoose character (Monster Inc) turning body animation. Dark areas indicate times of contact in frames.

So with this knowledge, I animated the crab character first.

Crab walk cycle

Crab run cycle

Crab turning body animation

Crab jumping

Six-legged with Horse Anatomy

In my thesis, unlike the crab, I still haven’t really have a solid finding for the movement patterns of six-legged creature with horse anatomy. But I think it’s okay to proceed with the animation at this point because it can also help my finding for my thesis as I’m further experimenting during the animation process.

For the animation, I used several references from the real quadruped horse since the animation behaviour and patterns would be very similar. I also found and used the short clip of Avatar’s ‘behind the scene’ that features some snippets of the creation and animation of the six-legged Direhorse from the film.