Research and Development for the Quadraped Walk Excercise

For the quadraped walk cycle exercise I based my character design on drawings I made a while back at Crayford Greyhound Racing Track. Initially I went there to draw as I was often on the look out for unusual social spaces to draw in- places where I could observe people interacting, and doing something more interesting than staring at their phones on the tube. However, when I was there, I drew far more dogs than people; I was completely captivated by their movement.

As well as using these drawings to develop a character for the quadraped walk cycle exercise, I have been experimenting with cyanotype (a method of print making that involves coating a surface with a mix of chemicals in the dark room then exposing the paper to UV light. The light produces the blue colour of the print, and any paper shielded from light produces white. In this case I used cut out stencils from the greyhound drawings). I have been considering the possibilities of using cyanotype as part of an analogue method of animation. The process of producing a single image isn’t exactly straightforward or predictable, and can take a few hours so it wouldn’t be suitable for a longer piece, but a walk cycle might be achieve-able. So far the only non digital animation I have made has been using the oil on glass method (see bottom image), I really enjoyed this as a more physically involved process, and a welcome break from creating everything on a screen.