Innovations - Animal Animation

This is my innovations project from NCCA's BACVA Y3 - using only a generic rig and model to portray two different animals by animation alone - a domestic cat and a dog.

Partly it came out of a practical laziness that has served me well over the years - if I'm only testing one thing, why complicate the issue by having to work on others? But mostly I wanted to actually work on my animation skills. I hadn't animated anything from scratch since first year (motion ref in second year didn't count) and one of the things I'd really like to go into is animal animation. You see so many good animations that are let down by a bad rig or uncanny model, so I figured I'd remove those from the equation as much as possible. The rig was made with Digital Tutors' quadruped (horse) rig tutorial, modified a little, and the block model referenced from the generic animal model in Animal Anatomy for Artists by Eliot Goldfinger (which is a most fantastic book for artists and anyone interested in how animals actually work). I was pretty pleased with the outcome of those - it's generic without going completely random. The neck is a little too long for either animal, and I would have rigged the head and neck differently, but you live and learn. Best rig I ever made, anyway. xDDDD

Animation was referenced from a whooooole bunch of sources. I bought Muybridge's complete locomotion photographs book (and good god was that worth it; SO MUCH MATERIAL) and reffed the hell out of his cats and dogs. I walked the dogs with *jinxhellbent and filmed them with ~Pspynett's camera. I watched THE MOST ADORABLE PROFESSIONAL KITTEN VIDEO EVER IN THE WORLD and then again and again and again...and referenced it. xD I also filmed some friends' cat, but she mostly just sat in a box or raced out of sight. >3>

I am now very experienced in the art of animating feet pushing off from the ground. |:

So yes, obviously I am far from perfecting my animation, but I am pretty damn pleased with how this came out. The report was...surprisingly unbullshitty and involved me telling the world about the differences between plantigrade, digitigrade and unguligrade, which I enjoy doing anyway. xDD

Made in Maya 2011.