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 :)

47 Ronin: A few of my shots in there :)

If anyone has been following the progress of this film I can tell you it was in post production for about 2 years....BUT it IS coming out, and now there's an official date! 26/12/13!!
Happy about this trailer, it shows some nice action plus a few of my shots are in this edit :)

Enjoy!

a longer "Frozen" Trailer

Enjoy :)

Horse Run Cycle animation with an animated camera!

Wanted to play about with animating a camera so I could quickly post a compilation of all angles to post online as I'm going to quickly jump onto another project that has a deadline and then come back to the horse to make it jump over a fence at a later date.  As always, I'll update progress and WIPs here....

Horse is Running!!!

It could still do with one more pass but I'm quite happy with my output using the layers technique, it isn't suited for everything but I can definitely see the benefits for cycles.

Here's the run cycle with the global keyed in Translate Z and the muted versions also.  I think I may try to get the horse to jump over a fence next and if I'm brave enough - come to a halt.

Comments and critiques always welcome as long as they are polite and objective :)

Horse Run Cycle progress....

It's not going horribly wrong, the layering seems to be working for me which just a few kinks to figure out.
I think I'll move onto fixing everything from the front now as the legs need to go in and out and I want to work with the shoulder muscles more for a heavier feel...