Art Station

Brand new community and portfolio website service for professional artists. :) It's still in the Beta test stages and you can only join if you're invited to start with, but once this grows it looks like a great resource for artists and employers alike :)

http://www.artstation.com/about

Dog Run Cycle Animation ~ Blocking 1

Here's what I have so far after Blocking out 6 key poses that I recognise from a dog run from reference footage and imagery.

As you can see, I haven't really looked at the run from the front, the legs are going in a very linear direction and there isn't any in and out movement from his feet.  So this is something I have to consider for tidying up.

I think from here I need to solidify those foot falls, it's all very floaty at the moment.....

Behind the Animation

There's a great new channel on youtube where it seems they are collecting a lot of nice animation progression shots from the professionals.  It's really nice to see how they are all pieced together, I insist everyone subscribe to channels like these:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn-Rn1NqLkY64R_KKPILTSQ/videos

a few examples:

Starting Dog Animation work!

Found this lovely new FREE rig on creative crash and got inspired again :)

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/dog

It's been a long while because I've been working on Guardians of the Galaxy but my time is starting to free up again.  In celebration (and completely not doing the normal thing of planning a holiday), I'm going to have another crack at animating dogs - my Achilles heel so far. 

I have loads of nice little ideas for dog animation, something grabbing it's attention, sniffing around a tree, running after a fake ball throw etc etc

But my usual problem is I try to skip ahead to the fun nitty gritty animation before getting my base work done and planning.  I'm going to re-familiarise myself with dog walks and runs first.

So, I give you - planning!!!

I've compiled a bit of reference, some inspiration, some real life footage, some good old Muybridge ref:

And just plenty of inspiring 4-legged work here :)