Quadruped Animation

Animating a quadruped is usually a challenge for an animator, due as humans we have an intuitive knowledge of bipeds moves; in the other side multi-legged animals tends to be complicated and technically demanding. Some of the techniques recommend  for starting this task according to Rocket 5 Studios is to do first a good research of the movements fo the animal frame by frame, a good page for this is Rhino House (http://www.rhinohouse.com/), simultaneously you take notes and make drawings, finally the process of animation starts (Feraday, 2012). 

Quadrupeds normally follows the same patterns of movement: dog, cats, horses, rhinoceroses,deers, etc., differing in the flexibility of the spine. The exceptions according to Eadweard Muybridge -Author of Animal Locomotion- are elephants, and animals like kangaroos. The pattern of movement is based in how hooves or paws strike the ground. Above its shown the footfall patterns according to the kind of movement proposed by Muybridge and addapted by Rocket 5 Studios (Feraday, 2012). 

Following this principles, I developed my own quadruped animation of a deer. However It's not still perfect, it helped me to undestand the basic concepts and improve in my future quadruped animations. In the first part I made the3D modelling in Z-brush, then the topology was made in Topogun, after in Maya I made the rigging and the animation itself.

References: 

Feraday, C. (2012). Approaches to Animating Quadrupeds: The walk Cycles. Rocket 5 Studios [Online] Available http://www.rocket5studios.com/tutorials/approaches-to-animating-quadrupeds-the-walk-cycles/ [Accessed:15 Decemeber 2014]