This should be good. Challenging, but it's a very cute thing to animate.

I would say that you need to look closer at the hind legs, they're almost in the same position in 3 of 4 frames. The two first frames especially. They should be kicking back more, so when the dog extends his forelegs, all four legs are almost horizontal.

I alo think you've exaggerated the extent to which the forelegs go back between it hindlegs, and again the forelegs hardly move at all between frame 1 and 2, then disappear way back in frame 3. Makes it more choppy, I think.

In the reference video, the paws on the forelegs are pointing forward as long as they're touching the ground. They only point backwards when they're lifted off the ground.

I'm a noob when it comes to animation, as you know, so these are just my casual observations. Apply pinches of salt.

Agree with everything said to this point, but...

The illusion you're creating with the animation and skipped frames is causing the front left paw to look a little broken. :\ I say this because without a frame where it's pointing down, it actually looks like it's slashing across - which it can't do. This is definitely causing the floppiness you're talking about. Otherwise I like it a lot. Love me some corgis! :D

I made some small edits - mainly one frame where the feet were touching and it read as though the belly were extending down much too far.  I know you like the floppy style better, so this edit probably isn't in the direction you want because it hurts that, but I gave it a shot:

There are some issues with contact of the front left foot and the disappearing of the back right foot, though.  The front foot needs to hit the ground sooner and then slide back as he pushing himself forward; as it is, it just sort of whips back and forth between the peak and the spot where the lift starts.


Edited by BottleGnomes - 23 December 2013 at 8:52pm

@BottleGnomes - I tried to emulate what you did with the front paws hitting the ground and then pushing off instead of just flopping around.

@H|F - I don't really understand what you mean by bending coming from the hips instead of the spine.. Could you elaborate please?

New version (back down to five frames for timing's sake) -
http://i.imgur.com/bmfBYAb.gif

Newer version, now back to six frames and with some changes -
Edit - made ears look less silly. If you have any suggestions for this, please tell me, because I don't want to start the shading/clean-up until I know the animation looks good.


Edited by DatMuffinMan - 24 December 2013 at 2:21pm

Oh my, I haven't updated this in a while. Here's my newest version -



I guess the dog should stay a bit lower to the ground as you mentioned, but the video you should is of a particularly fluffy dog. As a result, the puppy's fur appears closer to the ground, also hiding the tops of the legs.

That being said, do you think I should "fluff" out the newer version and make its legs shorter than they are already?

Edited by DatMuffinMan - 25 December 2013 at 1:42pm

It looks a bit better. And I posted the video as an anatomy example for movement.

I'll show you another, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ1lt8Y21QU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Their spines aren't really bending -which you seem to have fixed-, they hobble and their legs lift them in a rocking motion from the hips.

They kind of stay low and let their legs do the work


Edited by H|F - 26 December 2013 at 8:59am

@H|F - When I made the animation, I used bigger dogs for reference, and so my "corgi" now is quite a bit higher off the ground than intended. I don't know how much this takes away from my piece :L

Is there anything else that I could do to make it look like a corgi?

@BottleGnomes - Yeah, the front legs are completely out of sync; sometimes the back legs is in front, and sometimes it's in the back. Will work on fixing this.

Edit: shifting the whole dog down in the last frame seemed to do the trick.

Edited by DatMuffinMan - 26 December 2013 at 2:43pm

I got impatient and uploaded the "update" already, mainly because I knew what I did wrong and was too lazy to fix it.

Hopefully you won't take this wrong way, I thought about what you said, and decided that to fix the run, I would need to shorten the legs and lower its belly, so that while the hobble I added remained, it only had that rocking motion without much up/down movement.

Thanks for your feedback on this piece in general, it really helped.