Last year I posted a few animations involving cycles, which included an idle, a walk, a run, and a jump. They were an interesting challenge to tackle, even if all of them were pretty simple and straightforward examples of each motion. Well, I’m circling back to cycles this week and adding a few more limbs into the mix!

The basic principles of a walk cycle remain pretty consistent no matter how many legs or arms are involved. So to put this to the test, I decided to jump into “creature” animation. I wanted to see if I could translate what I learned from a human walk cycle to an animal’s walk cycle. I have a bit of creature animation experience, having animated a bunch of critters and bugs for Keeper and a few other projects. But up until this point, I hadn’t animated many quadrupeds.

My first thought was to try to animate a horse walk. This is a classic first quadruped walk cycle exercise, and for good reason; They’re complex to animate. Plus horses and animation have some very interesting context/history connecting them. With all this in mind, I decided to animate a pig! Any why not give them a kid companion too!? Here’s the result:

There’s always a lot of trial and error involved with animation, but this was especially true with this one. My earlier passes of this motion were way too exaggerated in terms of the pig’s body movement (specifically the shoulders and hips). So finding the right level of subtly was crucial. This became even more important when adding the rider, as any motion created by the pig would affect the motion of kid too. In the end, I think I managed to find a decent middle ground, having toned down a lot of the movement I originally had while maintaining readability.

I wrote a bit about the layered workflow in my last post, and this method was used here too. It helped big time with the secondary actions. Layering in those blinks, head turns, and expression changes really breathed some life into the characters.

As usual, I owe a huge thanks to those who gave me feedback throughout the process, including Toby Dart, Roman, Naza, and Amajoli. This animation wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is now without their crucial feedback. You can view older versions of this animation if you follow this Syncsketch link.

Thanks for reading!

Booboo Rig by characterrigs
Yu Lon Rig by Artem Dubina

My Links: ArtStation / Instagram / Vimeo / YouTube