Dog Animation

A little late on this post, but I've been busy with the Holidays these past few weeks along with the fact that me and my girlfriend recently just moved back to Florida from Texas because we really just weren't feeling the Dallas atmosphere (though the recent snow was cool).

That aside, my first semester of iAnimate finally finished up and with that I will post my last assignment.  The assignment was essentially a re-hash of a previous assignment that we already worked on, but with a quadruped.  I decided to choose having a dog go from a standing position to sitting/laying down.  I searched YouTube for a viable clip, but really wasn't getting what I wanted, so when i went to visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday I decided to use my relatives' dogs for inspiration.  The first dog was a little too hyper, way too much movement for me to try to capture anything, however the dog Roscoe who was a bit older and slower proved to be a much better candidate.

My initial passes went quite smoothly, and when I presented it to Steven he was quite pleased with what I had.  His comments were that I was moving a little smoothly, without the proper pacing to give it a natural feel, as well as that the dog was looking away from the camera the entire time.

So when I went back, I fixed the timing issues, added a little bounce and let him look at the camera, which really added much more personality to the piece.  I still wasn't quite happy what I had though and added a little extra personality to the piece by adding an ear twitch and some eye darts.  The eye darts though, I had to really cheat the camera because otherwise I was mostly just seeing the whites of the eye and it was kinda creepy.  Ultimately, I'm pretty pleased with the final results and when I find the time in my schedule i plan on adding some nice scenery such as grass and some lighting to bring the whole piece together.