In this course, taught by Toby Winder, you'll continue the exploration of animating quadrupeds. You will analyze references to better understand the anatomy and body mechanics of the animal. Next, you'll use this knowledge and your previous quadruped experience from ANI204 to produce a quality run cycle that could be used in actual production.
Toby Winder is a senior animator currently based in Montreal. He has been in the animation and visual effects industry since 2006 and has contributed to many projects such as Batman: The Dark Knight, Dr. Strange, and Alien Covenant. Toby has animation experience in high-end VFX, television, commercials, and games.
Class Listing
Class 1: Project Setup
Maya setup, project, hotkeys, preferences, etc.
Class 2: Anatomy
A look at the anatomy of a quadruped, exploring what makes them move in the way they do. An examination of references gathered for animating the cycle .
Class 3: Exploring reference material
We take our collected reference into Nuke and use it to stabilize and improve the readability of our reference. We will do some anatomy reference on this newly stabilized reference.
Class 4: Maya Reference Setup
Setting up and syncing our reference in Maya.
Class 5: Blocking
We begin by blocking in our key poses for the run.
Class 6: Blocking, Continued
Further blocking of our key poses for the run.
Class 7: Refining the front legs, part 1
We work on refining the front legs.
Class 8: Refining the front legs, part 2
Continued work on refining the front legs.
Class 9: Refining the back legs
With the front leg refinement complete, it's time to move on and work on refining the back legs.
Class 10: Head motion refinement
We move on to refinements of the head motion.
Class 11: Tail motion
We do some work on the motion of the tail, and we go through a good way to display your work for critique.
Class 12: Critique and fixes
We critique our progress (a very important step) and work on making fixes to improve the cycle.
Class 13: Finishing touches
We work on polishing some finer details of the animation, do a final critique of the cycle, and discuss possible improvements that could be made to push it to the next level.