Squirrel Run

 

This was my first attempt at drawing out the squirrel running. I used minimal frames and you can kind of tell what is happening here, but I could tell it looked very janky and off. The shape of the squirrel was definitely right, though, and using circles for the shoulder and thigh was a great idea because it helped me with  the stretch and squish of the squirrels movements. I didn't know if the pace could be changed to have it look better, since it would make the squirrel zip around like squirrels do.

Much to my surprise, there was a set of Eadweard Muybridge photographs for a motion pic of a squirrel running. I've worked with reference to Muybridge before and it was infinitely helpful in seeing how each of the limbs move individually, and helped me get a good sense of dynamics on my own work. I redid my squirrel running test again with tweaks from the reference images and found it to be a lot nicer to watch and more realistic in it's movements.

I especially love the flow on the tail and how the front paws move back and forth. I think the back legs could still be better but I see leagues of improvement in this version than the other two, and it taught me a lot about how to plan my squirrel's movement frames. The head looks a lot nicer here, with a clean up and down motion, in contrast to the backwards and forwards of the original ones that look silly and awkward up next to my later attempt.