Animation has officially started

… only 7 days behind schedule and animation has finally started (for the Hexalum beast that is). That’s not to say that rigging isn’t over, but it’s at a stage where I can animate it without it breaking… too much.

So I started off attempting a walk/run cycle for the beast and I wanted to refer back to the white apes from John Carter (for the middle arms) and really, you don’t actually see them ‘charge’ as much as I initially thought (you still get a really good idea though – they have very similar timing to the main front arms). However, I just wanted to search for a better reference (wasn’t holding my luck) and I found this..

six legged walk cycle example

Definitely doesn’t apply as much as the white apes but I thought it was a good reference and a good place to start.  I ran into a few issues with his arms as he tries to put them forward to gain ground, he can’t actually extend them out without it clashing into the horn mesh. But I was lucky enough to have already rigged the arms to have an elbow snap. Boy was this a life saver, really would not have been fun without the elbow snap. So here is one of my attempts at a walk (gallop) cycle trying to get a close run of how the beast would run in the shot and after receiving a little bit of feedback, he’s a little too ‘cute’ and happy, too free flowing, not heavy enough so that is what I’ll be trying to implement soon. (Of course more critiques are more then welcome.)

Hexalum Animation Reference

Personally getting excited about animating the Hexalum beast and being very inspired by the Beans monster.

and the breakdown

There is also the obvious beast from Avatar as it is 6 legged: has some really good leaps that we can refer to

But as we were going for a Gorilla type of beast that happens to have 6 legs (arms) the beast from John Carter is much more relevant

Mech Concept

Damien has put together some fantastic concepts on the Mech tank for Brad and myself to model.

The references for the mech.