An Animator's Perspective on the 1967 Patterson Footage

by Kyle W. Council

I am a CG animator by profession. As part of my craft I have an intuitive sense of natural human movement. I animate human characters for games. When I view the Patterson-Gimlin film, I see a mode of movement that is not human, but humanlike. The arm swing and movement of the shouler girdles are clearly that of a truly massive frame. The musculature of the creature is very thick, but not restrictive to the range of motion in the shoulder joints. In the trapezius muscle group, the diamond shaped set of muscles that anchor the shoulders, nape of the neck and upper thoracic vertebrae, the contraction of these thick muscle sheets is visible. In the cadence of the walk, and the amount of bobbing up and down, the presence of great and compact body mass is evident. Also the creatures knee, not reaching full extension, is certainly an adaptation to supporting great weight. A fully extended knee has poor resistance to twisting forces.

In conclusion, the reality of the film subject as an uncatalogued animal is self evident. It simply cannot be a costume, the boundaries of the human form do not even fit within the form of the creature. Furthermore, the mass of the creature is so great and carried with such poise, a man could not even be trained to carry such great weight or walk bearing weight in such a fashion. The muscle masses, if they had been padding, would have been static and restrictive. The presence of visible muscle contraction, the freedom of movement, the cadence of the walk, all fully support the claim that the footage documents a living hominid outside of the genus of man.

Also I have theorized as to the original frame rate of the film, and using what I know of motion blur from its computer generated counterpart, and judging by its duration and sweep across the frames, the frame rate was probably 16 fps. At that playback speed the film is most accurately reproduced. Even so the locomotory pattern is made no less disimilar to moden human movement by other frame rates.

The recent wave of debunkers and persons claiming credit for hoaxing the film is total rubbish. The PGF will stand the test of time, and hopefully your efforts, and the efforts of other researchers will serve to repair the damage that ignorant persons are doing to the field of bigfoot research.

Sincerely, Kyle W. Council