Unit Three & the Horse trot
Updated: May 16
8th of February 2026
In this unit, we continued to focus on animal locomotion and the principles of the quadruped trot. The brief will give us the opportunity to study the dynamics and muscle dynamics of the horse, and it will provide a better understanding of their distinctive gaits. Once we understand the distinctive characteristics of trotting, it will be comprehensible how they contribute to dynamic and rhythmic movement. This was the first time I animated a trot, which encouraged me to do further research on quadruped motion, focusing on horses. The trot is faster than a walk, and it is more rhythmic and energetic. While the walking is more of a rocking motion, during the trot, there is a more synchronised motion between the front and rear parts of the horse's body. According to Caroline Cochran (Madbarn, 2023), "The trot is a diagonal two-beat gait. Horses move their legs forward in unison in diagonal pairs, separated by a moment of suspension between beats."
We were required to create a 16-frame animation for our horse trot. There are a number of great horse rigs available; however, we were encouraged for this animation to use the Mothman TD horse rig, which is a freely available rig on Gumroad or Mothman-td.com.
Same as for animation, the best practice is to draw our own thumbnail sketches so we can return to them while animating the poses. Again, I started with the key frames or key poses.
As earlier mentioned, the trot is characterized by the synchronised up and down motion for the front and rear end. Following our tutorial, when setting the frames, I first focused on the 'up' and then the 'down' motion. Frame numbers 1 and 17 must look the same, and number 9 should be their opposite reflection. First, I moved the legs into position following my thumbnails and after that I selected the Body control to move the body higher up (as these are our 'up' poses). This resulted in overstretching some of the legs, so readjustment was required. The next step was to set the 'down' poses, numbers 5 and 13. Here again, I set the legs first and then lowered the body. Once these key frames were done, I added the rest of the frames, 3,7, 11 and 15.
The next thing I had to look at was the joints in the legs. It took some time to refine the legs and their curves so they resemble a natural/realistic pose.
After my frames were set, I went into my graph editor and smoothed my curves where needed. As learned in previous units, sine waves are important in periodic cycles like walks, trot and run. Looking at my graph editor, I made sure that my lines are smooth and balanced. For each animated part of the body I selected the Translate Y curve. I selected all the keys and set them to Linear Tangents or Spline Tangents for the smoothness.This way I could avoid feet slipping, clicking and limping in my cycle. Finally I turned on the Pre-Infinity and Post-Infinity curves to make the animation loop continuously.
Once I was happy with my trotting cycle, the next step was to animate the tail and the head. I again returned to my thumbnail sketches and set the poses for each frame. Just like with the cartoon fox tail in the previous unit, I had to set the tail curves one by one to avoid any confusion. Same as with the rest of the body parts, selecting Translate Y in the graph editor, I cleaned up the curves. The movement was then smooth, but it was too synchronised with the body, so I had to create an overlap motion. I went in the graph editor, pressed 'A' for All, selected all the keys and holding down the shift key I moved it over by two frames.
For my final animation I am aiming to look for further resources and to explore horse motions.
References:
YouTube (n.d.) [Video]. Available at: YouTube video
YouTube (n.d.) [Video]. Available at: YouTube video
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