Ridley

[Hydorah]

 

I drew it all out, but I can't even imagine animating a walk cycle. I'm helplessly lost and the IK stuff doesn't actually lock the feet down to the ground, they still rotate around all crazily so I have to keep doing it manually. And just how would anyone do the tail? ... Yeah, I'm totally lost.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

It just takes time... Find a good reference of an animal walking cycle similar to what you'd like, use either a ruler or guide image for the ground level to make sure at each key-frame the feet never go through the floor, and make each key-frame match your reference. Then do final tweeks and add additional key-frames between the core key-frames where needed if the feet go through the floor during playback.

Animating a quadruped by hand is advanced stuff, in the absence of ton's of experience, good reference animations, methodological thinking and a lot of patience will be critical.

[Hydorah]

Damn I doubt I could find a reference to match the kind of crawl this thing'd be making. I imagine a very "down to the ground / on the hunt" intimidating  kind of walk cycle.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Perhaps something like this with no bounce and lowered head... keeping the legs more angular for the low stance.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

This is a great reference in general: