For our second industry project I wanted to develop and strengthen my animating skills, which is why I chose to focus my tutorial on quadruped animation. The first thing I had to consider was what type of four-legged animal would I want to animate.
Keeping it simple I chose a horse, as they're very common in animations therefore I will have a lot of reference. Starting off, I looked at Eadweard Muybridge's work.
He describes several different walks that can be performed by different mammals, one being the gallop. Muybridge explains that the gallop is the most rapid of all quadrupedal movements and can be separated into 2 systems. There is the transverse-gallop, where the order of each foot landing creates a cross formation. And the other, being the rotatory-gallop in which the limbs fall in a rotative manner. The horse uses the transverse-gallop method as shown in Plate 7.
Tracing each image and putting them into an animatic gave me clearer idea of how the horse would move from one pose to another. I can use the still images and the animation cycle as reference for the 3D horse gallop.
I found a very helpful and in-dept tutorial called Animating Quadrupeds in Maya by Digital Tutors. They provided me with an excellent rig as it defines each muscle clearly. And below are my final outcomes from following this tutorial thoroughly and making notes for my own tutorial.
