Wednesday 13th November 2013

Character Designs

Today I began looking at cats as I intend to have one as the protagonist of my animation. To start with I looked at images of real life cats and also some drawings. I mainly looked at cats walking as I feel the hardest task of the animation would be to create a walk cycle. This is because I need to animated 4 legs compared to 2 legs, if I had a human as my character.

From the still images I have looked at I can get a rough idea of how the cats walk, however, I felt that I should look at some animated walk cycles to get a better understanding and to use as a reference when I begin my animation.

 Although it's not really a animation of a cat, it does have the same walk cycle. By watching this animation I can see how the walk cycle occurs with 4 legged animals. It's almost like there is an imaginary mirror dividing the front legs and the back legs. For example when the left leg (front) goes forward, the back left leg goes backwards. When the front left leg goes backwards, the back left leg comes forwards. The same occurs on with the right legs. Knowing this will help me with the walk cycle as I know how each leg should act. There is also a noticeable bounce with the walk which I should make sure I include.

Whilst I was looking at some walking animations, I felt that I should also have a look at how cats are animated in Japanese animation (anime). There is an anime called Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo which I know has plenty of animated cats so I felt I should check out a few gifs.

I found these two gifs of the anime which show a little bit of animation of the cats. The first one has a walk cycle which will be very useful as I can see the posture of a variety of different sized cats as well as useful for making the walk cycle itself. The second gif isn't as useful however it does show me that when the cats head moves, the tail also moves. The body however doesn't move so when at a stand still I won't have to worry about animating the body.

Whilst I was looking at some animations of cats, I got recommended to watch Simon's Cat. Simon's Cat is a popular animation on YouTube which is just have short skits involving a cat and its owner. These animations use most of the techniques we learned prior to this task (Walk Cycles, Facial Expressions, Squash and Stretch) and can be useful for me to use as a reference when I begin my animation. The animations will be a good reference for how the cat jumps, walks, and any other movements.