Sting Production - Colouring & Cleaning Up

After working into the rough animations I then coloured each frame in Photoshop in preparation for the frames to be imported into After Effects which will be used for the final sting.

By importing each individual frame into Photoshop I was able to go over the line-work and ensure the drawing style was consistent. I coloured the creatures as based on the Tex Avery source material.

Examples of the coloured birds which fly at the beginning of the animation.

Inspiration

Examples of the blue birds which fly in the opposite direction at the start of the sting.

Inspiration

Examples of the squirrel's coloured frames as he runs down the tree at the start of the animation.

Inspiration

 

 I imported the coloured frames of the squirrel into Flipbook and this shows the final outcome which I'm really happy with. The birds sadly came out in grayscale as they did not support the alpha channel setting.


I decided to change the ducks animation as the right duck flying was proving difficult to animate. I have made both ducks fly in synchronisation with the further duck been smaller in proportion so they are not completely identical.

To contrast nicely against the vibrant background I made the ducks a plain white colour.

My team mate seemed happy with the progress and asked me to save each frame as a Photoshop file with a transparent background so that when they are imported into After Effects it is just the creature that is visible.

 Once all the backgrounds were made transparent I sent them to my team mate who began to import them into the final After Effects file.

Sting Production - Rough Animations

I have been working into animating the minor characters featured in the sting and their progress is as follows:

My animation of the smaller birds flying at the beginning of the sting. My team mate liked this and wants to mimic the same birds flying across the screen but going in the opposite direction.

I found it more difficult animating the ducks flying out of the trees as I really had to concentrate on the wing cycle. I feel I have made progress with the animation so far though. The ducks are escaping from a gun shot in the sting and I therefore had to adjust the timing accordingly, therefore making it a quick animation.

I created these quick sketches of the squirrel which I have proposed to my team mate to have run down the tree at the beginning of the sting. At the moment I am waiting for feedback to see if he likes the idea and I will then hopefully go on to animate it.

I gained inspiration for this character from the original Tex Avery video which features the same character:

I decided to have a go at trying to animate the basic shape and form of the squirrel myself and I am happy with the progress so far:

 

Sting Production - Animation Stages

After discussion with my team member we decided that he would concentrate on the animation of the main character in the animatic and I would take on the more smaller roles of the characters such as the birds flying at the beginning.

I began by doing some rough poses and sketches in Photoshop to familiarize myself with the characters.

I used this reference image in order to practice the bird wing cycles.

Initial rough poses/sketches of the smaller birds flying at the beginning of the animation.

Flying ducks key pose practice.

From creating these rough sketches I realised there were some alignment issues with the flying ducks (including the right duck's feet) and that the wings needed a lot of work in the smaller birds, from here I then began to try out the key poses in Flipbook.

Character Design - Charlie The Cat

A 5 pose turnaround of the character Charlie the Cat, created in Photoshop.

A collection of Charlie's facial expressions, created in Photoshop.

How Charlie is constructed...