In my quest to truly understand gaits, I’ve dove into the study Biomechanics of locomotion in Asian elephants by Genin, Willems, Cavagna, Lair & Heglund. The graphic below is from the paper, and you can see that they are interested in calculating the forces on each of the joints. While that is interesting, I’m after the visual effect as represented in a walk cycle. So I took that bottom image and created an animated gif. It should run at .2 seconds a frame on most current computers, which would be in keeping with the given speed for this gait. I’ve doubled the walk so that – on the left – the elephant is stationary, on the right the ground position is. I want to do both gaits and eventually develop a system so that the footfall pattern can determine a non-linear, hand-animated sequence.

This sequence will – hopefully – be based on a simulation that Heinrich is trying to squeeze into his busy schedule, so that it would be specific for Kentrosaurus. Rock’n'roll.