Creating and animating a Horse

Now I've started to go into development mode for the forth coming project with the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA). I have started to work on animating the horse, I went through the internet and books to see how a horse will look like and how to draw a horse.



After that, I gone onto YouTube to look for horses in animation. I looked at a few Disney films which has horses in such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Mary Poppins to name a few.







Also, I looked at Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, to see how they would have draw a horse in each film.







Then, I gone onto the lightbox and started of by drawing a rough simple horse and mail coach carriage for practice.




After that, I properly gone onto the lightbox and started on my drawing of a simple horse walk-cycle's and run-cycles by looking at 'How to draw animals' by Jack Hamm.

Walk 1 test



Run 1 test



Walk 2 test



Run 2 test



Walk 3 test



By looking at the results above I felt that portions need to looked less more of a Pony then a Horse walking a few times and also with the run-cycle the back legs needed to be stretch out.

So, I looked at Richard Wiliams theory of animating a horse walk and run cycles in 'The Animator's Survival Kit', in page 356-359 how to do a basic horse walk and run patterns. As-well, I looked at Steve Roberts 'Character Animation Fundamentals' for horse walk and run cycle's. Then for a formula I taken out the real like drawings of Horses from 'Jack Hamm' and added the simpleness of the walk-run cycles' of Steve Roberts and Richard Williams on how they did it as my Walk and Run cycles below shows.

Walk 4 test



Run 4 test



Next up some human characters to draw.

Bye.