As requested by Jazzy I've been spending a bit of time thinking about the crow's walk cycle. She doesn't do very much besides walk around and fly (the crow that is, not Jazzy!) which leaves me a good amount of time to really study the movement and refine it as much as possible.
Birds are really, really weird — despite the fact that their body structure is surprisingly similar to humans (they have mostly the same number of joints anyway), it's the way they move that's so completely alien. I poked around on Youtube and found a handful of nice videos to use as reference:
Both very nice pieces of live action footage, but they're quite unsteady which makes it a bit difficult to analyse the movement and timing of the bird very accurately. I did try downloading them and stabilizing the footage in After Effects with the intention of drawing in each of the joints over the top of each frame to get a better idea of all the parts moved in relation to one another, but it didn't work too well. Downloading the footage did allow me to go through frame-by-frame, though, which was very useful despite the unsteady camera.
A basic estimation of the location of each joint in the leg — it's easier to understand them if you picture them as human legs with the thigh hidden. It looks like their knee is on backwards, but I think the knee is actually hidden further up the body — the 'backwards' bit is actually the ankle and foot!
When they walk their heads actually remain quite still — the biggest movement is the characteristic head bobbing that occurs when they shift their weight forward to put their leading foot onto the ground. It's a short, stabbing motion and then they bring their body forward to catch up which returns the head to its normal position.
Tracing the rough arc of the foot as it comes up and over. It's really very similar to a human walk cycle, except that there's no 'up' position. They remain mostly level, but they raise their leading leg much higher and push it forward as far as they can before they move their body at all. It seems to be delayed 'til the last possible minute when they lean forward to catch themselves.
There tends to be a fair amount of hip movement during the walk, but it's not especially noticeable unless the bird is really scurrying along, so I don't think there's too much to worry about there...
This one's not a typical reference video, but it's quite interesting and I found it helpful nonetheless. It's simply a video demonstrating a 3D model of a crow — but the way it's rigged, you're able to see how the movement of one body part influences another. Watch at around 33 seconds as he starts moving the crow's leg and foot — you can see the chest start to move up and down, influenced by the mechanics of the legs. It's fairly useful for understanding on a basic level how the legs, chest and head are connected — very important for getting that nice head thrust as the bird walks!
There are a large number of bird walk cycles that people have made on Youtube. They tend to be walking on the spot, which was very useful in getting a more clear idea of whether I was along the right lines in terms of hip rotation and head thrusting (sounds like a dodgy porno...)
Really nice hip and head movement on this one!
the best reference is of course real life, but I think it's pretty valuable to look at how other people have interpreted certain events, especially in terms of getting the timing and arcs and stuff right.
I'm gonna have a shot at building a walk cycle-ready puppet using some of what I've learned from these videos. Seeing how each body part moves should hopefully help make decisions on how best to articulate the bird puppet for best effect!
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