Creature Animation - Escape Studios

For this, we had to create a short animation that utilised the different techniques of animation when it comes to creatures. Emotion and language has to be portrayed very differently - usually in smaller facial expressions and body movement. So, in order to create the story I wanted to portray, I had to make sure these would come across well.

Pre-production

I initially began scrolling through Pinterest for ideas and inspiration for the kinds of characters I wanted to include. I knew I had to have two that were vastly different from each other for the kind of story I had in mind which had to come across in their designs as well. Part of the fun at this stage was that I couldn't really go wrong in anything! Throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process to me and from this I did find the designs I took forward as seen below.

From here I went onto storyboarding the ideas for my story. This part went through a lot of changes over the course of animating but, initially, I wanted a vaguely complex sequence of Peep (the character with the large ears) messing around to impress Mantis (the far more elegant one of the two). This unfortunately ended up being too much in terms of workload that I could complete in the time allowed but I feel the essence of what I originally wanted is still very much present in the final piece. 

Character Performance

From the beginning, Peep was always going to be the more active one of the two, requiring far more animation than Mantis did. This led me down the path of having to find references for him. While I initially started with bears, I ended up going for a far more catlike performance. However, I did still do an animation test using a bear cub run for reference before settling on the feline.

Mantis was always going to have a more elegant and aloof performance. She was also vaguely catlike in her movements - think one of those posh cats who definitely know they are too good for their owner. With these two personalities, I felt I created a good dichotomy and could move forward into animation tests. 

The run is done by taking a reference of a bear cub running and tracking the motion of its head and hips with circles. This meant I had a good idea where the positions of these parts would be and could better track the squashing and stretching of the creature. As for Mantis' head turn, I animated a ball following an arc and had the end of her nose follow that ball. This meant I could get a very nice sweeping motion on it.

Background

For my background, I wanted something very soft to allow the animation of my creatures to stand out better. I referenced a lot of gravity falls backgrounds as well as illustrations from other artists found online. I'm not a confident background artist but I found that stepping out of my comfort zone with it led to a very strong scene.