Abstract

This article presents the stages of construction of riggings for animation of quadrupeds, from the initial studies to its application in two episodes of an animation series. The objective is to represent the movements of the quadrupeds, within the narrative of the story, to allow the story to advance and entertain the viewer. For this, at first, with the storyboard in hand, the movements and the anatomy of dogs and cats - the animals chosen as animation characters - were studied, from the specialized literature, direct observation of the quadrupeds and analysis of videos recorded by the authors or found on the Internet. To give cartoon-style movement to the characters, research was done on how to apply kinematics to riggings, in scenes with or without interaction between quadrupeds, and on body language in a cartoon-style 3D animation. From this theoretical basis, riggings were built, improved, and applied to the polygonal mesh of each character, for body and facial movements. The result is on YouTube, with the first two episodes of the series. In the methodology, indirect documentation techniques were used, in which a bibliographical and documental research of the objectives is carried out. The method of observation in real life was also used, allowing the understanding of the movement of the quadrupeds and, in addition, videos from the internet and recorded by the authors were observed and interpreted. The text of the article is organized according to the sequence of steps to complete the construction of the rigging of the characters Cleo and Leo from the 3D animation series. In a next step, motion capture in quadrupeds will be tested.