Gator Collapse Final Pencil Test

Finally finished a scene!

Pencil Test

Pencil Test with Background

I may go back to this scene, but for now I’m happy with it.

WIP Background Matte

Backgrounds are a lot more headache inducing than animation is, my god. This isn’t finished yet.

Gator Collapse Test

Not too happy with how this one’s coming out, it might need some redrafting. Happy with the impact, it’s felt. Dunno what’s going on with his feet, I’m not sure what to do with them.

Also switched to Vimeo, since that handles short clips A LOT better than Youtube does.

Delicious Fish Matte

Using the sketch as a base, I painted this to be as delicious as possible. If I do this to all of my backgrounds, using the sketch lines for my characters won’t be a problem.

Two more pencil tests

Gator Jump Pencil Test

Taking a break from the first scene to do another scene just to cleanse my palate.

Scene 1 Full Pencil Test

Today I animated a bridge between two key poses and stitched all the tests together. Unfortunately, I lost the hard copy of one of the arm frames so I omitted it from the test. I still have them scanned in, though, so it’s no bother to recover it.

I think it works out pretty nicely.

Pencil Test with a Pencil Tester Setup

Need to work out the white balance and stabilise it a bit, but the scene’s working out pretty well.

More Pencil Tests

Today, I worked on two more bits of animation for the first scene, and the keys for another part:

The replacement tail swish, which I think is smoother. I also shortened the length of the snout because it was horribly off model and too long, making the character look ugly.

And the belly rumble, which I don’t think is quite finished yet. Hmm, something is wrong with it.

Will work more later!

Production – The First Scene

This week I have been working on the first scene of my film, and it contains a surprising amount of complexity for such a simple scene. In order to give myself time and spark to work on the more intensive scenes, me and Peter worked out how to do the aligator’s acting using limited animation, and Neil advised me on how to create the perfect pose for the attitude of the gator.

Not having set up my line tester yet (though a webcam is on it’s way!!) I was animating blind, having only the time honoured skills of rolling and flipping to guide me. I think it went rather well, considering. There’s still a lot of work to do (in both inbetweening and the animation) but I’m confident that I’ll be able to do it.


Preliminary tests

Talking of the first scene, I also pencilled out the layout for it, something that took me on-and-off about two days. Quite slow considering the amount of layouts I need to get through, but still, it’s a start.


Long Pan Shot