Horse Acting, Violence and Accidents

Horse Attitudes.

 
Horses in stressful situations gain and multitude of personality traits and mannerisms. This can be seen in cases of abused horses especially.

A horse living next door to my house (named Trevor) was a rescue horse, who was very underweight and had many dietary problems as well as been abused by the owners through physical treatment.
Trevor was ‘jumpy’ and although not showing signs of shyness, would openly kick and bite at people he didn’t know well. I over time got very close to him and even had him follow and chase me about the fields in game. 

Here is a little video of him following me about: 

 And anouther with me rubbing his nose:

Trevor is a young gypsy van cross (what with I don't know), he is now a gelding and was rescued a while back after being mistreated. When he first arrived next door he was very underweight but as you can see now he has put on weight.
Trevor loves to have his nose scratched and tickled and is very forward in his body language, he likes his face and neck to have attention and around his ears to be scratched at. Jet the mare next to him is similar though loves neck rubs even more.

Liz the pony down the end of the field is not as social at all and won't come say hello. Trevor is very friendly with me and will follow me along often. He also likes to play hide and go seek when the grass is long- me lying flat in it and him walking through till he finds me. The fact I can play a game like this where I am exposed and could be easily stomped on or kicked at shows how wonderful his temperament is. Or maybe he just really likes me.

He will sometimes chase me about (as seen above) and ask to be chased in return. He does kick his legs about but only when he is a certain distance from me- this being he likely knows better and that he could hurt me if he were to clip me on accident.

I have had him rear up and try to mount me on occasions during these games but he has since matured a bit more.
I also want to show his coat colours off which are lovely with his white blaze and black splotch above the eye. Very original. I hope to create my own colours that will stand out like that while still looking natural and believable. 

But overall his attitudes when first collected before were very notable, the way he would lurch his head out and bite at men especially. How he would stamp his front foot over and over in agitation or even kick one of his rear legs out. How he held his head and ears and keep his nose pointed down to his body.

I would think in times of war horses mirrored the same frustrated movements and I have here depicted a few notable stances and rough movements. These could be easily implemented into the horse programming and animated accordingly. When the horse was stationary it could do a few of these movements, especially when one approaches him or any cp’s come within range. 

Horses however are not all engative and can act in loving tender and comical wasy as well; here are a few of those to give some inspiratation to the ideas;

Belly scratching, very sweet. 

 

Horse clearly enjoying have his neck scratched at and another who loves belly rubs.

 

 

Violence 

(This sections contains a lot of horse violence and attacks- I did not enjoy looking at it but as this is a graphic game centered around war I cannot sit and focus solely on happy horses having their noses rubbed. As much as I would like that...) 

War horses also would likely have had a tendency to bite and lash out; and when horses attack people they can generally cause horrendous damage. Bites to the face are the usual to cause most pain and problems.
Personally I have never been bit by a horse, although have had them snap at me. Generally what one can look for in the horse who wants to bite is the tell tell ears flat back and slightly upturned top lip. Also what is known as the ‘stink eye’ which horses do very adequately to express their feelings. 

We must really be homed in on the body language of these horses as we cannot use their faces to show their emotions like with people; nor their voice acting skills above the tempo of their neighs and whinnies.

I found a vid that illustrates an angry horse perfectly here: 

The man was pretty innocent in this, but was just encroaching on the horses space. He should of seen how the horses ears and sudden walking forward were a show of aggression- not interest or curiosity.
The horse did not bite him hard- as can be seen that his arm is unhurt except for some likely bruising.

When a horse really wants to defend itself it will bite with hits front teeth  force able to rip the skin and kick out with its legs as seen here: 

 Horses can lose their temper and attack just the same as people would do, and although within games an obvious amount of detail is established and added into the human (or Alien- think Mass Effect)  and their body language to making their acting more believable and natural. Animals as such have not been given that much attention despite being just as gestural with their bodies as us; 

This horse is spooked and clearly does not approve of the slapping it is getting by the man and gives him a warning kick to the face. 

 Kicking is one of the horses main weapons and as you can see is very effective. Other vid here clearly display their leg power in a range of situations as well as accuracy of their kicks;

 Horses biting and swinging people by their powerful neck muscles is also very effective means of attack or defense. Though rarely seen I did find one video which gives an idea of how damaging they can be;

Other informative horse vids that may be of use later;

A young draft horse has awful hooves, likely not been tended to in years which are then fixed up nicely. We can expect the hooves of the horses in war to have rough hooves like this one- unlike the lovely crisp feet of filmed horses.

 Two wild horses have a small fight, very notable that the heard leader (pinto) warns to other horse first with his front legs. Horses do this as a very openly aggressive posture- think of it like a gorilla pounding his chest or a man rolling up his sleeves. 

 Horse Riding Accidents

A multiple of high speed horse racing accidents show how horses fall down; this is invaluable to gun battle with horses as the same sort of high speed disasters would happen. 

Riders staying on their horses may also occur- this could be great in game play to have riders partially fall off and dragged around. Accurate but quite horrendous. 

All of this would bring a greater (yet more grisly) sense of realism to our game and would improve the general dark and dangerous mood.