Animating four-legged animals is probably one of the greatest things you can ever do with your life.  If you haven’t tried it yet, you really should.  Particularly wonderful is animating a gallop.  There is just something about the changing shapes and the energy behind a gallop that is fun to try and capture.

The above is the gallop cycle that James Baxter created for the Dreamworks film Spirit.  It’s better than Muybridge.  Muybridge stinks because the time between frames is not consistent; if you follow it your spacing will be completely off.

Pay close attention to where he makes note of the up and down points for the hips and shoulders.  These are the keys for the gallop and probably where you should start out.  The other poses of the cycle slow in and slow out of those extremes.

I had a blast animating on Spirit because I had a chance to animate all kinds of trots, cantors, gallops and anything else a horse might do on its journey towards freedom.

Try it.  You’ll thank me later.