Animating a Heavy Character

I've been animating a big 'ol dinosaur lately and here are some tips I've picked up along the way before and during this test:

Animating a heavy character -

-Big up and down as the legs absorb all that weight

-Ease a lot on downs, Spend more time down than up, it's harder for the weight to go up, and once it's up there, it really wants to come down!

-The feet stay on ground as long as possible before stepping: peel up slowly keeping that weight support as long as possible, and then quickly throw themselves forward, hitting that ground with hurried force to catch all that weight as soon as they can

-Super exaggerated overlap from all that heavy weight dragging behind what the body is doing, again, lots of ease when dragging down and spend as little time as possible when up, without looking too snappy.

-Overweight people seem to have a tendency to throw their arms forward to try to gain momentum. They don't bend very much, so they're kind of stiff, but the arms will work more to try to move all that bulk.

-If you have toes, show really clear toe spread and toe straighten as the foot takes the weight. You can fake this "foot spreading" with shoes by translating the foot up very slightly, rotating the whole foot down very slightly, and rotating the toe up accordingly, so it stays above the ground. It's very subtle but it's way more effective than just freezing the foot to the ground. As the weight transfers to the other foot, you can reverse this action with a quick copy/paste. Voila!