Animating a Dragon ~ part two ~ beginning research

 
Due to how much of a case study I would like this to be, I plan to conduct extensive research over the next several weeks.

This week, I shall be focusing on bat flight.

This is one of the creatures I would like to use as inspiration for animation, because while Dragons appear closest to lizards, the bone structure of their wings, especially in the case of the rig I'm using, seem closer to that of a bat than a bird or a flying lizard of anything kind (not that they really exist, more gliding lizards).

The wing movements of bats can be a little too fast to easily see, however slowmotion videos and gifs are very useful in allowing us to see how bats move their wings to fly.

From this we see that generally the tip of the wing is brought behind the shoulder and then down and in front of both the head and shoulder. Looking further into this, we can see that as the wing is bought up, the different bones along the wing, which somewhat resembles hands, are curled inwards but as the front of the wing is rotated downwards, these bones unfurl again.

We can also the body is almost at an 45 degree angle to the head, something that may be worth exploring with the dragon rig.

Another thing of note with this is how the legs are used in this flight, now while with dragon rig does not have any of the wing connected to the legs like how this bat does, I think it would still be an interesting and potentially successful thing to see what the dragon rig looks like with similar leg motion when in flight.

While I am uncertain if I will animate a walk/run animation with this dragon rig due to wanting to focus mainly on the flight, it is still worth analysing how a bat might walk/run in case I find myself having time to animate one for this project. 

Here we can see that a bat perfects a hot, similar to how to a dog might run however due to it's short legs and very long arms, this becomes a hop. Having short legs and very longs arms is something that a lot of dragons also suffer from, so this type of run could be very interesting, especially if adding the additional weight that a dragon would have. This has potential to create quite an intense and scary run with the dragon, however it also has a risk of coming across as "goofy".

Next post, I plan to either animate a "bat-like" flight cycle or to analyse a bird's flight cycle, espiecally a big bird like a Buzzard. 

 

Animating a Dragon ~ part one ~ introduction.

Intro

For module GAM250, I have chosen to animate a dragon. However not just a simple showreel, I would like to delve into the research side a lot more than usual and make this somewhat a "case study".

Over the next couple months, I will be animating a dragon taking inspiration from real life creatures as well as reviewing and analysing cases where dragons have already been animated, such as How to Train Your Dragon and The Hobbit films. 



The Rig

Due to wanting to focus purely on the animation side, I will not be able to rig a dragon of my own, so I shall be using this rig: https://truongcgartist.artstation.com/store/1Vlw/maya-dragon-rig-jaemin-dragon

I have chosen this rig as it has plenty of controllers, along with Set Driven Keys for the wings, allowing for the wings to be furled and unfurled easily. 

Another reason for using this rig was that it has IKFK controllers on it's wings, legs, head/neck and tail, which is another very useful feature.

The rig also features controllers for animating wind in the skin between the bones in the wings.

A big bonus of this rig is that it can be found at the student-friendly price of free! However paying $1 for it is more than worth it as it is a great rig.