Post 2

    This week, I spent time doing the quadruped walk. I first gathered a lot of references of cats walking from the front, side, and top view. I know that all the cat’s feet touch the ground at different times, but I didn’t want to confuse myself. I figured that I would animate the beginning, middle, and end poses first and then offset each step to reflect how cats walk in real life. For the beginning pose on key 1, I had the cat’s front right paw and back left paw stretched forward, while the front left paw and back right paw were stretched back. For the middle pose on key 12, I had the exact opposite feet positioning. Finally, I copied and pasted the beginning pose onto the ending pose on key 25 for a seamless loop.

    I did some in-betweens on keys 7 and 19 so that the paws moved in arcs since cats tend to put one foot over the other as they walk. I also added some side-by-side movements in the spine, shoulder, and hips. At the moment, I’m animating solely on 3s, and I’m not going to animate on any other keys until I feel happy with how polished these key poses are. 

    Next up, I am going to add some bobbing movements in the head and spine. I want to really study how the hips, spine, and shoulders influence one another while the feet push up or fall down while walking. After that, I’ll focus on the small details like whiskers bouncing, tail swaying, and toes curling. I think the tail will be the toughest part, because the lead and follow through motion always confuses me. I tend to avoid tails at all costs, but that’s the reason I wanted to do this animation specifically as a warm up. I don’t think this little project will take me much longer. I think I’ll be done next week. I’ll implement the feedback I receive from class the following week, while also starting my next project.