Galloping is harder than it looks...

11 weeks to go before third year productions cease and our year switches off the lights and shuts the studio door so we can open another door that hopefully leads to a happy future........hopefully.

Nothing has changed in my workflow for the Claws for Concern film, still tasked with the monster job of key framing out sequences ready for in-betweens alongside the director and producer although my job has slowed briefly as final layouts are sorted out so the bear is in the correct place for animation in the shots. However just before this, I was given the sequence involving the bear drowning after his boat is capsized after the storm. They wanted a slow motion, bear flailing his arms as he sank feel and without a time constraint, as the animatic was only a rough guide, I could stretch out the time it took for the bear to perform this action.
To begin with I had only placed down the main keys but when they were given the shot I'd done to review, they weren't sure if the arms would work as of course it's hard to know if the action truly works unless the full fluid motion is complete. The second video below is the rough keyed out version that includes some extra keys to get a better sense of the arms flailing and sinking.

Animatic shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

For 'The Bird' I've completed the other mammoth task of making sure the stripes work on the finished gallop cycle and then placing the zebra in the background to see if it all fits together.

 

 



 

 

For this shot the camera zooms in on the herd and tracks it for a short distance before cutting away so my initial thought was to animate the herd moving across the screen and the background remained static with the additional camera zoom added, however I found when the camera gets closer to the animals, the gallop jitters regardless of whether I used a straight line as a guide for the placement of the hooves for not.

 

 

Herd without the camera move

 

 

Herd with camera move

 

 

I also thought making the zebra move instead of the background would be the best way to avoid what may end up looking like zebra trying to gallop on ice and the hooves sliding across the ground when they should be glued in the same position until the zebra lifts a certain leg to bring forward.

So although I originally believed the second option below wasn't going to work, it did actually work when I tested it so now the background moves while the zebra gallops on the spot to give the illusion its covering ground. Included is also the basic camera move but what also made me want to rule out this second option in the first place was the fact there was a camera zoom as well, which I thought might break the illusion of the zebra galloping forward. Trial and Error as they say.