Hello there again! A bit soon to be posting again, but I'm finishing up my research. I don't actually have huge amounts of real footage of the species of my characters in motion, and if I want it to be as realistic as I imagine it, I'm gonna need a lot of that footage!
Getting bird footage is... well... difficult. Come back, birds! Where am I going to find myself a large bird of prey? An owl? Something? ...okay, surely I can gather my own cat footage. Yes, I tried, it did not go well. The most athletic thing Sunny can do is roll over. Bless him.
That poor owl. I thought it would probably make more sense to look at the owl being fairly stationary, and though the quality isn't fantastic, you do get to see some simple body language. That owl is not a happy owl!
Same idea here; this little owl is quite relaxed. (The panting might suggest otherwise, but as the video says, it's actually just keeping itself cool).
Now that is an impressive owl. Look how pretty he/she is! More what I'm shooting for for my villain. Get to see him/her moving around a bit too, which is useful. :)
The following are flying references; since that's what the scene involving the owl has him doing the most.
A nice little video of an Eagle owl; get to see him/her taking off, gaining speed, gliding, changing direction, and landing. If only it were in slow motion...
That's better, much better! To be honest I couldn't tell whether it was a very good piece of 3D animation at first or real footage. After seeing Legend of the Owls: Guardians of Ga'Hoole I just can't be sure anymore!
Two for the price of one. For some reason I really love 0:17 - 0:19 when the Great Horned Owl avoids the branches of that tree. But even more impressive is the agility of the bird in this video...
Why that is just unbelievable. I know that it's a Goshawk, not an Owl, but I think I can take a bit of licence when it comes to animating my owl, provided I can actually pull it off. That bird is amazing!
And here's some other, perhaps less related birds that I looked at, but they were very interesting to look at none the less, and I absolutely don't see any harm in giving my Owl the capabilities of other birds. He is an evil warlord with magic! :D
And I have to link these two because embedding is disabled:
http://youtu.be/gVdphioscJA
http://youtu.be/MOqteBWgBqM
Next up, cats! Like I said, my cat Sunny is a bit on the portly side, and he doesn't move much, and when he does, he doesn't move far. I mean, to be entirely fair on him, he does go out at night sometimes and probably beats up other cats in the neighbourhood but I'm not going to chase him off into the night, crawling through hedges, hopping into peoples' gardens... nicking other people's references is much, much easier!
Now this is supposed to be a video of two cats fighting in slow motion. The thing is, they're not fighting, they're just playing. The movement is still good to have though.
This is two cats fighting. It's a small fight - ever seen a REAL "extreme cat fight"? I'll tell you now, it is vicious. And it's not funny. I hate it when people get a severely distressed cat that's hissing and spitting because it's absolutely petrified and laugh about it. But I digress. Two cats scrapping. But thinking on more about it, I don't think I'll have this style of fighting, though I might keep elements of it, particularly the staring match that occurs between two cats in a confrontation.
This is a reasonably nice reference for a cat running (but why are the reference videos always in such low quality?)and personally the run cycle looks rather similar to that of a dog to me, so I could probably mix some elements of a dog run into my heavier set cat characters.
It was just then, when I couldn't find any more good videos, and all hope seemed lost, when I found out that Whiskas had a channel! Their cat biscuits and supermeat cans are absolute crap (but Sunny sure loves their packeted soft food) but these videos are fantastic. If only they weren't cut into like that they would be much better.
Cat leaping. Very good thing to have, I expect my characters are going to do a lot of fancy jumping around in trees!
Wow, that does look quite menacing.
While it's good that I found a video like this because my protagonist in my draft storyboards does fall on her feet, I feel kind of sorry for the cat just being dropped like that.
I really don't know whether I'll include a scene in which a cat is cleaning themselves, but given how much my protagonist looks like a bald rat, maybe I should. Tell the viewers, 'Okay, I know this looks like a rat, but it's actually a cat. Look, cleaning itself like a cat! Totally a cat'.
Awww! ...Ewww. ...Awww! ...Ewww. ...Awww!
That's all I have time for now, but before I post, this video has both cats AND a bird of prey in it, and I couldn't believe what I was looking at when I saw it!
That... is a BRAVE cat.
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