103. Holiday season post

During the holiday times a walk cycle animation was definitely due. Fuelled by mince pies and some seasonal cheer (with sherry) Santa veers into the zeitgeist of Christmas with occasional fumble as he heads to the home in his ice fort of solitude. A fun progressive walk cycle.

101. Weight Walks - Bipedal boulder pusher

A truly Sizifian task. To kick off (or push off) the next series of walk cycles a humanoid pushing a heavy boulder. The boulder is circular so it can be pushed, but I wanted to convey the sense of something heavy which needed a lot of power to shift. The boulder is a little bit oval, lending to this, and also escaping the paradigm of becoming too geometrically perfect. It’s unevenness gives the sense of movement and rhythm. The man is pushing with his whole body. His calves are tense and there is a point where not much seems to happen. I hold him in one place for an extra frame adding the additional weightiness to his struggle. His body is further portraying tho as he strains pushing from his hips keeping his arms outstretched in contrast with tucked in head and top heavy heave-ho. 

100. Quadrupedal Rudo the Bear

And for the happy number 100 of the walks here is Rüdo the bear. This one harks back to the youth. A dancing bear would be brought by it’s ‘trainers’ whenever there was a fair or carnival in town, so practically in autumn this would happen a lot. Spring had it fairly frequent. I presumed that bears bears were on holiday during the summer and they hibernated during the winter. 

For this quadruped I studied a video of a bear to get it’s realistic movement down. Most of the locomotion comes from hind legs as the weight is shifted to the from of the animal. As the bear steps up, it’s weight is distributed throughout the body trunk sinking to it’s bottom. There is a very small push with the front paws, though this is mainly for the balance as the limbs relax very quickly, The bear then uses these as an additional balancing anchor as it walks forward, giving impression of dancing. So for the last one of the quadruped arc we’re going back to the biped model. Next week I’ll be compiling all the 50 quadruped walks into one happy sequence.

99. Quadrupedal PassiveAgressive gait

Today we have a character, developing notions of neutrality. The hind legs and the front ones go through balanced passive and aggressive phases. The walk is done on a tight ‘H’, with back leg landing before the front is raised giving a little wave of the spine. The front limbs arch sideways, posturing and benching forward, grabbing the airspace only to relax and go into the reverse push motion. 

The paw does a figure ‘6’ in this arc, as the movement originating from the shoulder travels down to the high wrist joint. The back legs do an aggressive dig, ground scratch. At this point the rear end goes through a little circular se-saw loop. After the leg presses into the ground it eases out, knees outstretched in a lazily passive momentum. As there is a lot going on with the legs I’ve kept the head momentum fairly simple, following the body pass. 

97. Quadrupedal baboon butwalk

After a bit of hiatus WWO is back! I’ve had a lot of projects on and an additional two personal skill developments. One involves Blue, Red, Sakuga, He-Man, Naruto and a wealth of fightyiness, but I’ll be posting more on that once the project is completed.  Once this arc of quadrupeds is finished I will be going onto a weighted models. Dragging, pulling etc. The format of updates will change somewhat. The outcome will be hundred walk over a period of a year. This will allow me to do more complex kinetics and have more playful characters. I will still be spending around 3/4 hours weekly on it, but the updates won’t be daily. The quality of walks will be increased as a consequence as I peel into another layer of kinetic knowledge. 

So back with a walk. This one is a quadruped baboon like creature, the dog-like mammal differs from other monkey genus in the thorax link and it’s gait is more like that of a canine (alongside it’s muzzle - probably a link between two species - baboons are known to keep dogs within their groups). Style of the walk is in a tight ‘H’ as each limbs flows in a quick succession. The front arms are posturing raising the chest, view and the importance of the monkey. The back is a swaying butt, similar to a caricatured boxer a while ago, se-sawing at up to 45 degrees on each side. The head bobs along in a nodding fashion (quadruped equilibrium does not need a complex head system like ours). It could be having a stroll alongside it’s dingo companion.

96. Quadrupedal Dölf the Christmas horse

Finishing off the quadrupeds with a Christmas theme. Today I worked on a X-Mass horse. The shape of the figure is inspired by a large Maurovic painting I’ve seen as a child. 

The large over exaggerated musculature of the body and top part of the limbs creates a powerful animal. Dölf is walking with a parade march, his front limbs resembling that of a soldier, while the back leg push offs are closer to a classic equine placement. They both push off and slide on the ground moving the large trunk in a forward attentive pointer stance. The front legs are also breaking the joints on their way down creating a stronger swing arc and accenting the solid stance frame afterwards. The neck is doing a figure eight with a small loop at the front and a large one at the back. 

95. Quadrupedal Doom Yoga Metal Ocean

Today's walk has been largely inspired by a Yoga session and a healthy smattering of Ahab (doom metal German symphonic music with a distinct aquatic theme). The figure itself has joints which are broken in many ways compared to a standard animal. 

It resembles an insect/ arachnid or a hand. I wanted to play with the form which would create quadrupedal walk  cycle if I broke all the rules I learnt so far. So the figure is propelling itself forward by using the top torso, it’s spindly legs dragging itself. On an odd accent beat the back leg catches up and pushes forward becoming so stretched by the figures spine movement that it rubberises and turns tentacle. This then slams in the ground bouncing off in a ‘normal’ step for such an odd figure. These walks are taking a lot longer than 30 minutes currently as they are more developed. A twisted cycle today.