Metal Fly Animation

This is the animation I created in the beginning of the semester for the assignment where we needed to create a short animation using one of the pre-rigged models given to us. I came across this robot-fly construct among the choices and thought it was interesting, and I've always been kind of interested in how insects move all their legs in conjunction, so I decided to try to make a walk cycle for this model. I had a couple of sources, which unfortunately I can no longer locate, but one was a video of a six-legged robot designed to walk like a bug, and the other was essentially a stick figure recreation of an insect's walk cycle, shown from top and side views.

The tricky part about this assignment was actually the fact that the rig wasn't made properly, and so the pipe-like appendages coming out of the sockets in the bug's body, which the legs slide in and out of, did not actually move with the legs. Therefore, I had to go through the animation, syncing up each pipe to their respective legs and making key frames for all of them, making this project much more time consuming than it otherwise would have been. That is why I did not have time to finish the walk cycle so that this GIF would loop properly and look like one continuous walk. I also had some difficulty exporting the animation, which is why the model is kind of low quality and there's some weird lighting issues with it.

If I were to continue working on this, I'd make sure the legs all looped smoothly, and look into how the bug's body should rock and sway in time with its legs. I'd probably also make it slide across the camera's view as it moved, to reinforce the illusion that it's actually walking.