A while back I created an animation which showed where I thought the foot bones/joints should be in a bigfoot. I decided to expand on that and try to recreate the whole skeleton. I wanted to see a side by side of a bigfoot and human to show how a bigfoot walks to demonstrate if bigfoot, using Patty as my model, really does walk differently. I am not an expert in animation. In fact, I am a novice and had to learn as I went. While on vacation, I photographed a skeleton at the Chicago Field Museum. I then manipulated the skeleton by increasing the bulk and limb length based on a careful comparison of the Patterson Film. The skull is a homo erectus with a photo shopped sagital crest. I decided that it would be much simpler to recreate a 2 dimensional animation looking perpendicular to the subject’s path. In this way, the bones would not change their lengths and it would be far simpler. I manipulated the bones in a frame by frame animation to try to replicate a complete stride so that it keeps walking. I based the movements of the limbs on the Patterson film which is moving away at an angle; therefore, I had to do some interpretation (best guesses) as to limb angles. I did a frame by frame comparison but I found that it was not easy trying to replicate the exact movement with much certainty. Most frames do not show the feet and show the arms and legs at angles. The human skeleton on the left is me walking on a treadmill, minus the flesh of course. That was far easier because I could easily see my feet in all frames and the video quality was much higher. I thought it would be most useful seeing me walking side by side with the bigfoot.

Whoa! that is cool!!

COOL!

An this one shows a little more detail. I will probably polish it up a bit still and would certainly welcome any constructive criticism

It was my goal to get my skeleton walking on the site by Halloween. Barely made it.

I can hear the bigfoot's pounding footsteps!

Good job, Jim! Very cool.

Great work Jim!

That is just excellent Jim, great job!

Wow!

I can see that you made the ankle with the long heel.

Did you change the hip?

Did you make it walk in a "compliant" gait?

Marvellous work.

HOWEVER: the Bigfoot skeleton's lower leg rises only to the same 70° angle to the knee that the human's does. This is a key difference that leading authors and researchers (like Perez & Hajicek) have been mentioning for ages, but that hasn't been given sufficient weight by the rest of us. Here are a couple of quotes:

It looks like you're doing the moon walk and BF is on the treadmill. But seriously, Jim, that's really nice work you did there. I'd like to see it slowed down a little bit. I was trying to watch for the mid tarsal break in the foot, but it goes too fast for me to see very clearly. That is my only constructive criticism. Good job, I'm sure that was a lot of work.

The hip is actually a human's that was modified to fit Patty"s cross section. I suspect males have a smaller pelvis. I did include my previously reconstructed foot though as you noticed. The gait was copied as closely as I reasonably could by overlaying the skeleton to the frames in the Patterson film, especially the frames right before she turns.

Very cool Jim! The only constuctive thing that came to mind is that the bobbing of the head looks too quick. I think the head should move up and down (just a bit) in a sine wave pattern. Supposedly the compliant gait gives less head movement than humans when walking, but there should be some.

Very nice Jim. I think if you got Sas's knee bend up to 90 degree's per RogerKni's post, you would have a very polished bigfoot animation.

A while back I was working on a more detailed analyses of the foot.

Thanks. I think that is something I will try to do so that the head and body does not look so deathly still. It is hard to interpret any head bob from the film and I suspect that it would be less than humans but I will add that little bit for realism. It was obviously easier just to keep copying her head and torso. Previously, I copied the pelvis bone to stabilize the film in each frame. It will take me a couple days though depending on how much time I can spend on it.

This frame shows her lower leg at approximately 90 degrees. There was a frame on the Patterson film that also shows her leg at this approximate angle. It is kind of fleeting in the animation and perhaps I don't hold it at that angle long enough. I will go back and look at the Patty frames more carefully.

Interesting. Good job Jim!

I vaguely remember an article comparing running to walking in humans, and the motion of the head was important. I tried googling it to no avail. But you have a great start on this, very cool

Great job Jim. Thanks from all of us.

Jim, I've always said that the fellow I saw looked like he was gliding rather than walking. And, I've always worried that I wasn't describing the arm swing in the right way. This helps me understand what I saw and how he moved. It may not be perfect, but it's darned close IMO. Thanks.

Thanks, JayleeD. I am glad to hear that it resembled your sighting. That is cooler and more interesting than simply resembling Patty.

I added some modifications based on some of the comments. I moved her torso a little to add some life. In the film, the only bob I could make out was as her foot lands she seems to bob her head downward (as well as her whole body) as if she is holding up a great weight. It is subtle but hopefully its visible and adds a little realism. Also I slowed it down a little, bent the leg slightly to 90 degrees, and bent the foot a little more in the midstride.

Wow, great stuff!!!

My own experience walking in thick vegetation brings me to assume that the high following-leg may have something to do with clearing the vegetation and debris on forest floors. Most people walk on flat surfaces free of debris, so don't need to bring the following-leg up very high for it's forward movement.

I remember reading that Abraham Lincoln had a gait that was the subject of many jokes. Many thought it was because of his general build (tall and skinny), but he explained that it was from walking in the wilderness, especially through snow.

I also note that Patty's face is aimed downward, especially just as she is entering the forest.

This is how I walk in the woods almost exclusively. Even when in Southern California, I used to walk looking downward (to make sure I didn't step on snakes!), but here in Alaska, looking downward while walking is required in order to not trip over something, because the ground here is knotted in brush, roots, downed wood, etc.

VERY nice work Jim. A couple quick thoughts for you as I assume you continue to refine this:

1. I haven't thoroughly measured them yet but it looks to me like you've made the lower portions of both the arms (i.e. radius/ulna) and legs (fib/tib) too long. In primates, the proportions very rarely approach being even (i.e. upper leg as long as lower leg) so it would be very suspicious if this was in fact true of the PG figure. And even with all the inconsistecnies in measurements (and hence proportions) I've never found the ratios to be close to even in my best attempts to measure individual frames. In most apes the brachial index (forearm to upper arm) is ranges from 75-90 and the crural index (lower leg to thigh) is about 80. I'm getting about 92 and 100, respectively, on quick measurements of your animation frames.

2. Again, haven't taken any measurements or closely compared it to any frames, but it looks to me like the torso is bent too far forward. It's center of gravity would be quite far forward and necessitate a higher speed, I'd think, if it was really this forward leaning. It may well be and I could easily be convinced that you have it exactly right, but my first impression is that her slouch is exagerated.

I'll try to make some more measurements to verify that I'm seeeing things correctly.

Again, very nice work and my hat is off to you.

Apeman

Apeman, I just finished reading (and responding to) your nice work discussing musculature with skeptical greg in another thread. It was very interesting and informative. It is difficult to get an exact angle of her torso. I wouldn't be surprised if her torso is too far forward in my reconstruction. I tried to get the skeletal proportions by putting the sketeton on various frames to get a best estimate (guess) for limb length. I spent alot of time on it but I certainly could be mistaken. As you pointed out in the other thread, she doesn't bend her arm much as she walks and it is a little difficult to pinpoint her elbow joint. When possible, I used frames with the appropriate limb at 90 degrees. I used the 15 consecutive frames right before she turned. Since the subject was moving away, some proportional errors are certainly possible (probable) in the reconstruction. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions and yes it is still a work in progress.

I was actually also thinking that the torso might be slightly too far forward. With the deep-kneed gait it's difficult to say--that could possibly support the torso. Try it and you'll see what I mean--you can really only walk that way if you bend your knees so much.

Too, I think the forward attitude of the PGF subject's torso could be somewhat of an illusion. With the head situated more forward than ours and the added bulk of the shoulders, it may seem that Patty is more forward-leaning than she actually is.

As for the head bob, I don't really see any in the first image. It was only after you blew it up some that the exaggerated head bob appeared. Was this possibly an anomaly specific to that version? At any rate, I see little if any head movement in Patty relative to her stride.

Again, great work, Jim!

One other little tweak (especially if you can verify that it appears in more than one frame) would be to show the sole more vertical just before or immediately after toe-off, as it is in frame 310 (p. 52 of Meet the Sasquatch).

If you want to get really adventurous, you could show the foot flexing at midpoint, as three of MKD's recent blink animations reveal.

Cool!. Much improved

Sorry to be so nitpicky.

The left hand looks like it's on backward, like he's bowling or something.

I should point out that I could never do anything remotely like this. I'm in awe.

Yeah, the left hand is actually the right hand. I have to do something about that. It does look kind of wierd. When I photographed the skeleton, I had no left hand nor could I find a very good one. I will fix that. It will not be too difficult to straighten her torso. I will have to decide on what her average torso bend is. I figured that walking is kind of a controlled fall. As you lean forward, you catch yourself over and over again as your front foot reaches out to regain your balance and propel you forward but I probably exaggerated it a bit. Anyway, I'll straighten her up a bit and see what it looks like along with some other minor modifications mentioned. I got to finish some work work first though. I appreciate the comments from everyone.

Good work Jim! Very fluid & hypnotic. I see you've already addressed most of the feedback. I'm impressed that you're set up to make quick changes. I look forward to your updates.

Jim,

Upon further review....the angle of the torso appears to be right on or even too vertical. I get around 24 degree for both the PGF and your animation and, assuming the figure didn't straighten up as it turned, it would appear straighter as the torso swings around so she would in fact be more stooped than the 24 degrees if we were looking directly at her laterally.

PS- I realize my lines aren't using the equivalent points in this comparison and don't pretend this is vey exact.

And here's a comp of your skull and a gorilla which I hope might help you to improve that a little. Note that the sagittal crest (in front of the red line and above the blue line) sits on top of the braincase. The full round skull is there, with the crest like a fin across the top. In yours, which I know was a quick effort, the crest overides a good portion of the braincase.

What's complicating, and a good subject for another thread, is that gorillas actually have a much larger occipital crest (above the blue, behind the red) than sagittal crest, which accounts for a large part of their enormously tall heads. Part of the function, obviously, like the sag crest, is to increase the area for the temporalis/chewing muscles to originate from, but the occipital crest also helps for the back neck muscles. Gorillas, with their big snouts and jaws, need to help 'balance' that so they have the big crests in back to help attach muscles (orange) onto the huge spinous processes (gray) of their cervical vertebrae. Theoretically, a sasquatch (if they exist) wouldn't have such a big occipital crest and there is no evidence that the PG figure has one any bigger than we have. This might account for why her head is more pointed dorso-ventrally than a gorillas (i.e. big sag crest but small occip crest), but I've always found this aspect problematic. But that's a sidetrack.

Here's the comparison. I need to find a good lateral shot of the figure's head and think about this some more. And again, this is really a tiny detail that makes no difference in the big scheme of this animation- which is about the movement. But on the flipside, the head always draws attention, so the more "realistic" the better.

My vote for Posters of the Year go to the Zenors'. Always interesting!



:notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

Cool. I lke the sagital crest. I did a pretty quick job on the crest. On my original, I Actually copied the dark part by cheek bone. I think it can use a little work and I like the example you provided apeman. I do have the bones broken down in a "png" file using microsoft Digital Image Pro. I can easily move the bones in this file to have it do what I want but I have to copy it into "jpg" to animate it with my cheap animation program and the jpg file freezes all the bones in the frame.

I believe this has been discussed before but patty looks like she's limping?

I heard people say that Patty limped but I never saw it so I couldn't honestly put it in my animation. I never saw any walleying of the knees either. She seems to me to walk extremely smoothly given she is walking across rough terrain. I modified the hands as I remembered the hand casts and sagital crest in the mold of the gorilla.


Whoops forgot the animation

Brother Bob convinced me to reduce the front of the crest a bit but got to go watch the rest of the Laker game.