… 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..
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.)
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