Sting Production - Final Animations

I have been working into the animations I have created in order to clean them up and make sure they're ready for importation into the final After Effects file.

I was asked by my team member to create a short animation of some leaves which are thrown out of the tree as the ducks fly out, I created a number of versions of this animation before I was happy with it and my team mate liked the final outcome.

I tried creating realistic leaves which shoot out of the tree and then fall due to gravity but my team mate wanted a more comical effect on the leaves.

I then changed the animation by giving them more of an arc and by importing them into Flipbook with the ducks animation on another layer I was able to adjust the timing appropriately.

The final animation coloured and layered.

The other animations were then cleaned up to finalise them. I was going to change the blue birds and small birds wings to give them a more realistic 'U' shape but as they only appear quickly at the beginning of the animation I was hoping to get away with that small inaccuracy.

Small birds animation.

Bluebirds animation.

The final squirrel animation which I'm very happy with.

I have sent the final files to my team mate and the next stage will be sorting the sound out on After Effects which I have been collecting and checking over the animations when they have been imported to check for errors and inaccuracies.

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.