Designing animal characters

review of the book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1446922.The_Art_Of_Animal_Character_Design

Richard Williams books 'Animators survival kit' has some great tips and things to look for when it comes to animating animals, in particular quadrupeds' (four legged animals).

A particular example he uses is 'does a horse walk like a man and an ostrich'.


He also uses these types of diagrams to explain the walk cycles of a qaudrupeds, using a dog as an example. He explains how the muscles will squash and stretch as the dog lifts its paws off the floor. Also the tertiary movements of the legs and the body (the shoulders follow the movement of the leg as the dig walks forward.)



Most animation practitioners, in any principle, have found the Muybridge collections to be some of the most useful references for studying movement of people and animals.

  This is a character sheet of the horse character from the Disney film 'Mulan'. The design of the character does well to represent the horse through its form, but has stylized the character through the use of full round shapes. This adds weight to the character and overall gives it an appealing quality.