Animation Blog: Scorpion Animation Tutorial

Tuesday 11 July 2023

Scorpion Animation Tutorial

In this Scorpion Animation Tutorial we demonstrate how to animate a scorpion in motion. Scorpions are fun to animate, and there is a good free rig available online by Kiel Figgins, which can be found here at his official website.

Watch the video below for a general introduction to the rig, how to find it, and how the rig works. The scorpion tutorial is similar to the spider tutorial, but a little more complex, as we have to deal with eight legs, two big pincers and also a tail.

Scorpion Animation Tutorial

Scorpion Locomotion

Scorpion Rig by Kiel Figgins

Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order "Scorpiones". They have eight legs (though our rig has just six), and are fun to animate.

Kiel Figgins Scorpion Rig

To get started, find the Scorpion Rig by Kiel Figgins here at his official site. If you have any trouble downloading the rig, or if you would like our updated version (which fixes one or two bugs in the rig) send us an email at info@animationapprentice.org and we will send you a copy.

How to Animate the Scorpion Rig

To see how to use the Scorpion Rig, watch the Video below:

Arachnid Motion

Lee Caller's "Tank -v- Scorpion"

Like a spider's walk, the motion of a scorpion looks complex, but is in fact quite easy to animate, by breaking the motion down into simple steps. Start by animating a simple 16 frame walk cycle on the first set of the scorpion's legs.

Once this is working, copy and paste the animation curves onto the second set of legs. Then offset the curves by 8 frames.

Then, copy and paste the same curves onto the third set of legs, offsetting the curves so that each leg offsets the one before (our scorpion rig in fact only has six legs, so we will stop at six).

Scorpion Tutorial