Major Project: Collaborative [Pre Production] (Part 2- Creature Animation)

This is the second part to my pre production for my collaborative major project. As well as the  human characters, I am animating some of the creature. The creature is based off of a big cat and should move similarly to a lion or panther.
For the short I will need to animate the creature transitioning from a walk to a full sprint. I will be working on producing cyclic animation first and later I will work on the transitions between the gates.

For a walk and a run I created thumbs and animatics:

Refined Thumbs for Walk Cycle

Rough Thumbs for Walk Cycle

I was happy with how my animatics turned out though for the animation I feel I will need to stretch the poses much more and ass more character to them. I don't want them to seem too vanilla as there needs to be personality for the creature as much as there does for the humans. I am excited to animate a big cat-like animal as the only other animal I have animated was my horse. That seems like forever ago and I hope my animation skills have improved since then. I think it will be challenging but I have been itching for the chance to animate a big cat for a long time so im sure it will be fun.