Claws and Birds

Forgetting to post now productions are hotting up in the final animation department but both films I'm working on have entered the full animation stage with keyframing happening in Claws for Concern and key framing and inbetweening for The Bird.

The Bird has decided to opt for each shot to be completely done by one person so passing key frames and in-betweens on to different people prevents any confusion in what needs to be done to the shot. If one person does an entire section then that person knows what needs doing to the shot.
So no surprise after all the zebra testing I did last semester, I would be tasked to animate the zebra scenes.
Below I tested one of my original zebra in the completed background with an additional camera move so we could see what would work in the scene. It was decided that tracking the zebra in the second move would work better as of course the main character would be sat on top so focus needs to be with her.

So with a new zebra design that fits better with the overall film style I have begun fully animating the gallop. Once again the tricky part in the weeks to come will be the stripes but the tests I have done previously will help me to know what worked and how I can make them work correctly first time round in this final animation.

And for Claws for Concern we are currently going through the whole film key-framing the shots out ready to be animated by second years who wish to help on the project.
In order to get to grips with the new refined bear design, I spent a couple of days drawing him repeatedly so I could avoid inconsistency in my key frames when I came to do them. It was discovered that drawing his eyes slightly out of place affected the whole drawing which is why keying out the shots is limited to being done by a few people that have got the bear design nailed down accurately. Below you can see I wasn't quite getting his head shape properly so the producer marked out where I was going wrong so I could go back and improve.

And low and behold I got there in the end.

So far I've key-framed two shots for them. One required more subtle animation than the other and I found the more subtle movements were more difficult to do just because not a lot of exaggeration is required, and when animation is a lot of the time, about exaggeration of real life actions it's difficult to tone all of that down for a slight head movement. Luckily my crazy obsession with anime helped to overcome that issue as anime has a limited frame rate so quite often there are static shots within the genre that only involve a subtle head tilt or mouth movement but conveys a lot of emotion, so drawing upon what I see every day in what I watch allowed me to put that into practice with the bear. The reference below came from 'Free! Iwatobi Swim Club' and this came in handy when trying to make the bear look miserable and defeated in his day to day life as an animal working among people as this same emotion is reflected within the anime character. I picked up specifically on the slight head tilt to the left and the way the eyes move.