This week we had to animate two near identical quadrupeds for a game. Under strict rules from the game studio we're working with, we can't elaborate anymore on what we were working on beyond "quadrupeds", but this info should be applicable to putting gender into any animal.
Preaching to the converted; people-like animals in animation have those conventional character traits pulled from people-like design and performance. When stuck with a realistic animal or realistic anything, we battle to apply those (blatantly!) unrealistic characteristics to such creatures, and of course don't forget, keep it realistic! We're back in animation-land, put it there, exaggerate! but we do not see it, but oh how we feel it, that dog is clearly a girl, the cat's a fella!
I'm not going to delve into acting, just sticking with body mechanics here. So the big one: walking. How does a conventional man walk:
- feet apart, absolutely no cross over
- slower but with greater strides
- more Y rotation in hips
- greater feeling of weight
- head moving side to side or/and rotating more
- greater swing of limbs and shoulders
- one foot firmly (or near firmly) on the ground before raising the other
Inversely the established conventional woman:
- feet closer together, emphasising the outward curves of the hips, cross each other
- quicker with small strides
- head straighter with little rotation, except Z rotation, which can be high depending (good for sex appeal).
- back upright with less rotation on the hips
- general feeling of being light
- feeling of "delicate"- steps are precise, arcs are straighter and bow little
I had tried referencing my male siamese cat in the past, cats are terrible, they always seem feminine. It almost feels this conventional woman was sourced from a cat.
These bullet points are so John Wayne and the most sexist understanding of what a woman is, I wouldn't normally preach this milking of unimaginative, over-exhausted gender traits. Trying to demonstrate opposite genders to two similar looking animals, I eased these traits in and some places went hard at them. The more exaggerated, the clearer the gender is. Although there's the fine line of breaking realism and going to either cartoon or kitsch (silly sexist, oh you sexy bouncy swinging hip lady, bloke-y macho he's the man.. blah blah).
With animals, the first obvious part is the head when seeking an identity. Keep it static for a woman really implies the feminine. Birds have very static heads, but if you apply that too strongly to a male character you can lose its masculine appeal. With a male quadruped, those front "shoulders" at the top of his front legs can be given greater rotation, give him a bit of a strut as they rotate with his leg movement. Likewise for his hind legs. Like the biped walk, strides longer and feet apart, and inversely for woman.
The final big seller is the weight, it's all trial and error, what looks right, use that artist/animator's eye... don't hang about the graph editor forever. Something that I've discovered with the classic female walk, like from the Siamese from Lady and the Tramp. They delicately place their feet, like the biped woman one in front of the other but they have high (what would be in 3D) Z rotation on the hind hips, and up and down movement to exaggerate. This gets that female "booty". Influence is small on the front, where motion seems to be independent, or rather that booty moves independently from the body.
Happy animating,
Mattie Walsh
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