Today I put together a jointed puppet of the cat using cardboard and blu-tack. I then created a short run cycle for the cat using some of Muybridge's panels as guidance.
Thoughts
At first glance the cat's legs seem a little shorter than they should be for the body, but when I arrange them in the same position as other drawings, they are actually an identical length. The animation was not nearly as successful as I had hoped due to a variety of reasons. Firstly, the body was a single piece of cardboard and so could not change shape. However, as a cat runs, its spine bends and straightens again, so this meant that already the run cycle did not look right as the puppet's body was rigid.
The next problem stemmed from the fact that the reference images I was using from Muybridge used an irregular gallop cycle. At the second step the cat keeps its right paw in the air rather than placing it on the ground. This caused my cycle to appear as though it had a limp. To combat this I removed some of the last frames and made a shorter cycle involving only the first step. This shorter cycle was more effective but suffered from the problem that the body gradually moved forwards during each frame. This means that as the video loops, the cat appears to jump back slightly every time.
Future Plans
I need to create designs of the silhouettes of the other characters in the story before I can move forwards any further.
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