EXPRESSIONS: Cats

I knew I wanted to do some kind of cat for this animation but I wasn't sure which kind. I started off by looking at my pet cat and doing some observation sketches of him as he lay around the house.

I then went onto looking at big cats, starting with the panther. I wasn't really feeling it though at this point and went on to looking at tigers. Specifically, Shere Khan.

I looked at how animals express emotion, especially big cats. Because their faces work differently from a human, their are only so many faces they can pull and each face could have multiple meanings. Cats also use their tails and ears to express their emotions as well. For example, an irritated cat will twitch its tail. A shocked or scared cat will flatten their ears and a content cat will close their eyes.

Not to mention another indicator of a cat's emotions is through sound. There are different inflections of meows depending on the emotion of the cat and also purring, which is commonly believed to express happiness. This is true, but the purr also serves another function, a cat will purr to comfort itself when it is ill or in pain.

Tigers however do not have this type of purr, if they do make a noise similar to a purr it is probably more of a growl. I could, however, for the sake of creative licence, ignore this fact and insert a sound clip of my tiger purring to help express him even further.