Goat's Interrogation - Character and Dialogue Animation (2D)

Goat's Interrogation - (2D) Character Animation and Dialogue.

The prompt we received for this project was to create an 11 second animation with a lip sync within around 6 weeks.

My goal for this project was to display the techniques I had learnt from class during my first few weeks as a Second year in Escape Studios, techniques such as: squash and stretch, anticipation,  staging and etc..

The audio clip I decided to use was from The Dark Knight Trilogy film, when Falcone Meets Scarecrow.

My characters were inspired by a sheep and a goat, and as the audio itself mentions drugs I thought it would be humorous if these two human hybrid animals were conversing about fresh grass dealings.  

Character Designs: 

                                                       SHEEP

                                                      GOAT

One feedback I had received about my character design was mostly about my sheep character not appearing to fit the voice for the dialogue, and I had been suggested to make his face less symmetrical to make him seem more flawed, but as I had already begun the rough animation stages at this point of receiving the feedback,  I was only able to make it so that one of his horns appeared to grow shorter than the other.   

Pre-Production:

My storyboard only consisted of four shots as I was mostly focusing on the framing for when each dialogue would be said. I later revise the storyboard into an animatic to get a clearer vison on how I wanted the characters to act out in each scene.

ANIMATIC:

Rough Animation:

Lip Sync and Line Clean Up:

Due to having chosen to work on Procreate I had come to an issue of not being able to hear the audio along side animating the dialogue, this was because Procreate does not have a feature of importing the audio for the animation process (at least I do not know of). My solution to this was to simply animate the lip sync which coincided with the character movement for when the words would be said, and then import the animation into a video editor to see if the audio and animation aligned, if not I would simply have to go back into procreate and adjust the durations to make it sync up.

This process proved to be quite a hassle, and so for my future projects with a lip sync I plan to use ToonBoom Harmony.

Colour Palette:

The original colour palette I had chosen was very monochromatic but, after reviving some feedback from my tutor we came to the conclusion that it would be better to have the background be darker so that the Sheep character could pop out more.

 As the Sheep character is essentially referenced by the Michael Jackson  Smooth Criminal MV my tutor had recommended to reference the the colours from the video with its use of dark blues and purples to better contrast the Sheep, as there are shot with Michael in his white suit dancing along side with backup dancers who are dressed in black,  I also ended up changing the Goat characters shirt from white to black.

FINAL ANIMATION:

In the final animation I also added a few blinks on the Goat character to make him appear more human, while the Sheep character doesn't blink at all to make him look more insane and menacing (this was also a note from my tutor).

If the final animation were to be shaded I was planning on shading it in a similar style to the DC animations, which was also feedback I had received from my tutor, as the audio itself is from a DC batman film the harsh shadows would compliment the setting.