Imogen Serret: Initial designs- zebra

Because I'm a horse addict and I've been given free reign (or rein, no pun intended), I've opted to make the zebra more horse-like just for my own preference and I understand horse anatomy 100 times better than a zebra. Both aren't much different in terms of anatomical structure and I want the stampede to look more graceful and flowing, like a river which for zebra, who are slightly stockier, would look more like a river of mud.

I've been taking a lot of inspiration from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and a little from the The Lion King (the little screen time zebra's get) in order to understand cycle speed according to frame rate. Obviously horses all gallop/run at different rates, some cycling through a gallop faster than others, so I have to make the decision on how fast the cycle should be.

Spirit from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

On observing Spirit further, there are two horses that have differing gaits that gain more screen time than the secondary horses, Spirit and Rain. Spirit's gallop is exceptionally more wild and fast to reflect his wild nature, so he completes a full cycle faster than Rain (below)who has a more graceful, slower gallop and takes a few more frames to complete a cycle.

Rain from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

The obvious difference is Spirit is male and Rain is female so a more graceful gallop for a female horse is understandable. What it comes down to is the speed needs to reflect the tone of the scene and the character, being Tilly, who is a wild child. My initial thoughts were towards a more flowing gallop and for that I thought of Rain but if I want to show that wild attitude, a gallop more like Spirit's might be best.

Zebra stampede scene

What helps in this decision is a similar scene is conveyed in Spirit where he races the eagle, beginning at a slower gallop before quickening his pace to overtake the eagle's shadow.

Below are my initial zebra designs as well as further development of one of the designs followed by an initial run cycle.

The cycle has been created on ones and although it depicts all the wildness and high speed attitude, I feel the movement could be more fluid. My initial reaction is there's too many frames so areas that have smaller movement are jerky however taking frames out means I'm making the movements with more impact (i.e. faster) more jerky. (Below is the movement done on twos)

I began this cycle looking at the Spirit run cycle and then drawing my own movement in relation to this.