21st November
Today we had a special lesson with three different types and shapes of dogs joining us. To give us a good understanding of walking or running in a more direct and in-depth way, three dogs were invited to run, walk, sit, stand and perform, and then we were asked to draw the dogs we saw with great speed and understanding. I found this very challenging as the dogs were very active and moved very rapidly. We needed to understand the size of the dog, their limbs and how they coordinate with each other and then move the whole torso, head, ears and tail to walk.
First of all, we need to figure out what are the keyframes of quadruped walking. Here, our teacher purposed the concept of Contact and Pass which I encountered for the first time. It basically means during dog walking, there are always 4 frames that one of the legs is been lift up either in the front or the back, left or right, and the rest of them are contacting the floor. By using this way, we can easily capture the 4 keyframes in a quadruped walk. After that, we will be able to fill in the between frames.