First person perspective and tests

In order to create the rhino point of view within my animation, I wanted to do some research on real footage from an animals point of view using a camera attached to their bodies.

I found that National Geographic actually have project for this exact purpose. It is called Crittercam and another set up called Wildcam. Crittercam is from the point of view of the animal, where as Wildcam is a camera set up within the animal’s environment so they can act as natural as possible without being disturbed by human interaction.

I need to be able to create the illusion of a rhino so that the audience can believe the first person perspective. The focus on weight and movement is key to make this animation believable. However, I do not want to move the camera too much otherwise it could throw off my audience.

Here are some simple tests I created in Maya. I used a simple block environment to create some perspective and depth and then animated the camera.