heads and tails animation

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  • Hello World!

    A bit about me…

    My name is Hollie. I looooove horses and have had my own since 2011. Since my early gaming years, I have always been drawn to games that feature horses whether they be marketed at equestrians specifically, fantasy or period genre games. However, one thing has always stuck out to me… the horses always seem a little off. Whether that is the way they move or the tack and equipment they wear.

    In 2022 I chose to study Games Design at Staffordshire University as gaming is a big hobby of mine and I want to create my own equestrian themed game one day.

    As it turned out, I wasn’t much good at the whole designing side of things, but found my passion lay in animation. In September 2025 it was time to make my own project, the thing I really, reeeaaalllyyy wanted to make since being at university, Bare in mind, I was on a design course, not animation. But, I took the challenge on anyway and used my own horse as a reference model to create a quadruped walk cycle.

    For 16 ish weeks I worked on the project and I was proud with how it turned out. Feedback I received was also positive with praise from the lead animation lecturer considering I was on the design course and had only completed level 4 animation, quadruped animation being level 6.

    So, it was from then on I decided this is what I want to do. I present to you my works so far…

    A few snippets of my first walk cycle

    I have been working on a canter cycle in preparation for GradEx. This is an event held at the university where I have the chance to show my work off to industry professionals.

    In this image, I am cantering my horse Gypsy bareback. I have put the video into SyncSketch where I can break down the poses. I have started the animation on the first pose where the back right leg is the fist to come into contact with the floor.
    Next, you can see as the back right lands and pushes forward, the diagonal pair of back left and front right land simultaneously while the front left continues to pull through ready to land next.
    As the front left leg lands, the back right leg comes up. As this is a 3 beat movement there is only 3 hooves touching the floor at one time and one in the air. As the horse moves, there is one leg touching the floor while the others are suspended in air. You can see as Gypsy drops her weight into the front left leg, her head comes down, following the movement.
    As she works through the canter, the back right comes into contact and as she propels herself forward from the hind quarters, her head comes up to lessen the weight on the forehand.

    Sketching out the poses makes it a lot easier to break down and keep going back to the video to see things I may have missed. This is my work so far. https://youtu.be/WL6x4NoJyro