Great Reference for Animals and Creatures from the BBC and Getty Images

Here is some great reference for animators, specialising in animal locomotion and behaviour, from the BBC and Getty Images.

The site is easily searchable so, say you need some reference footage of a cheetah running, it's all very easy to find. You can easily download the videos as .mp4 files, and then open them up in QuickTime so you can step through them frame by frame.




On the downside, all the movie files come with a Getty Images watermark, but that doesn't undermine its reference utility? We only need the video for reference anyway, so a watermark doesn't stop us from doing our job as animators.

And, with YouTube increasingly cluttered with bizarre (but often popular) videos, it can be hard to find the reference you want there. The BBC motion gallery is dedicated to animal locomotion, and finding what you need can be much quicker, with much better quality footage.

To read more about how to use live action reference in your animation and get an excellent, realistic result, see this blog post.

To find the BBC/Getty images site, follow this link.

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.