SkylandersHotDog - Creature Animation

HotDog is a character from the Skylanders toys-to-life video game series published by Activision. I've always wanted to draw HotDog and see him play and be happy more (being from a fighting game after all), so I took this creature animation as the chance to achieve this.

So first things first, I need to learn to draw this lovable lava puppy. 

Fortunately for me he comes not only is design (I-Wei Huang) but in a physical toys-to-life figurine and 3D video game model!

With the hang of HotDog's main shapes in hand I could next to a run cycle test. This test would inform me on any dangers and challenges potentially hiding in the design and creature choice before I commited to a full animation.

For this test I found his extreme stretch and squash poses then brokedown and inbetween with guide from The Animator's Survival Kit, Alex Williams' animal reference studies and Ripper the Boston Terrier from FOXSports' 2021 WKC Agility Comptetition. After these drawings I refined them with tweened free-body circles to track and improve their arcs and spacing.

Happy with the animation I adding a touch of twisting rotation then moved to a colour test. With a lava creature a challenge in its colouring would be in portraying that glowing shifting magma look. To achieve this I used an overlay layer to add details and a cheap gradient using air brushes. This layer would cut into a colour card for uniformity and a glow effect applied. I was very happy with the result and how time effective it was.

The Final Creature Animation

There were only a few major changes between my first storyboard idea and the last. These came from tutor feedback such as combining the animation into one shot and removing a jump over camera for assignment specification clarity. As the project continued, actions were reduced and simplified for a more achievable scope; having continued with the first idea to mind had left me with an ambitious project to complete, my major lesson from this project.

The next project difficulties I found were in the transition from storyboard to animatic and layout. Here I had to tie down my ambitious and awkard poses into solid drawings as the skeleton of the animation. Here I felt my developing draftmanship skills held me back as this stage drew a lot of time and effort from me. Due to this and a week lost to illness, I was running low on time. In the end I could not finish the butterfly animation and HotDog's tail, claws, collar tag and tongue. I am, however, very proud to have focused and finished the main body animation to its final quality with my colour process too.