I’ve been working on an animated dog automata today. I’ve based the main mechanism on a slightly modified version of the mesh gear essential mechanism from here (I’ll release the updated mechanism shortly) The geared down drive gives the dog a nice slow motion feel as he runs.

In this version of the model the head and neck are connected up with the box top so that they pull back and forth, up and down, as the dog runs. The legs are currently just glued into place to see how they look, in the next version I’ll connect them up as well so that they move with the dogs movement.