Little Nippers - Finalised

Finally got my animation finished and edited in iMovie today. Overall I'm quite pleased with the results, though I'm not too fond of the sound effects. The soundtrack is a little something I threw together in a program called Mixcraft (which is essentially a Windows version of Garageband), and at first I was skeptical about how it sounded, but I think it works quite well with the animation.

While I was putting it together I realised I'd accidentally set the Toon Boom file to have a resolution that wasn't HD, so when I changed it I had to move things back into the right places, which is why some of the positions may look a bit different to how they do on my older videos.

Little Nippers - Title

The title image I created for my 15 second intro to a children's cartoon. It was originally varying shades of the same colour, but this made the letters blend into each other a little too much, so I made the differences a little more drastic so that each individual letter stood out more.

Little Nippers, Scene 2

Here's what I have so far for the second scene of my short intro animation. This is still a WIP and there are many things I need to tweak (such as Samantha's stiff arms when she walks) and add (the title, for one thing), but I decided to upload what I have so far anyway because I like how it's turning out. I'm particularly pleased with Oliver's movements; his moveable spines really help emphasise his emotions, and he was met with many an "awwwwww" when I showed this to my friends.

Little Nippers, Scene 1

Finished off the first scene for my 15 second children's animation. This originally started off with a closeup of the background and panned forwards until it was all in view, but this added an unnecessary 4 seconds, so I cut that part out so that I'd be able to do more with the second scene.

This particular scene is now pretty much done. I'll be adding sound effects and a music track once I've finished off the second scene and got it all together in iMovie.

More Concepts and Early Animations - Oliver

After coming up with Samantha's initial design, I decided she needed a buddy of some sort, and got to work doodling up various dinosaurs. The one that seemed to be the most popular (and that was my personal favourite as well) was the Stegosaurus, and he went on to become Oliver (they grow up so fast).



A couple more doodles later and I'd settled on a look for him, and a personality as well. I decided to muck about with his spines a little, and made it so they moved back when he was scared.



This was his first rig, though it suffered a lot of the same problems as Samantha's original one. His legs where also only made up of two parts, which made making them move rather tricky, as seen in his first test animation.

Samantha - Early Animations

This was the first ever test I did with Samantha's old rig. It's nothing too special as I was mostly getting adjusted to the software, but having never done this sort of thing before, I liked the results anyway.



It was after I tried to do a walk cycle that I decided that redoing her rig would be a good idea, as the gap problem mentioned in my previous post made this fairly tricky to do.



This was the first test I did with her new rig, which was much more expressive than her old one. This one had three interchangeable heads, could blink, move her pupils, show either the back or palm of her hands, and move her claws (though this isn't shown in this particular test). I was also happier with this one aesthetically, as it was much less flat than before.



Though this was mostly me having fun with the camera (obviously the movements will be less... elaborate in the final piece), this is a good example of how much more expressive Samantha's new rig was.

Some Concepts - Samantha

These were the first drawings I did of Samantha. As you can see she doesn't look a whole lot different to how she does now. Ordinarily I go through a fair amount of concept designs before I settle on something I like, but with Sammy it just came almost instantly (although that might be partly because I based her on an existing character of mine). My tutor suggested changing her feet as they looked a little too much like hooves, and also to perhaps modify her hands a little so they could show a little bit more emotiveness.



After tweaking her look accordingly, this was her first rig. However, it was fairly limited in that her pupils were permanently fixed in the same place and she couldn't blink, and the way I'd made her parts meant that if she bent her legs a certain way, there would be a triangle-shaped gap.

Starting Things Off

Thinking of what to put as your first blog post is trickier than it looks. Hmm.

To kick things off, I think I'll start with what I'm currently working on as my main animation project. Our task is to produce a 15 second introductory animation aimed at preschool children, and since I always loved dinosaurs as a kid, that's what mine is going to be all about.

Here are my two main characters, Samantha and Oliver:





Samantha is the mischevious one, always getting into trouble and making a nuisance of herself. Oliver, on the other hand, is timid and quiet. As you'd expect, these contrasting personalities result in all sorts of wacky hijinks.

In my next post, I'll show some concept art and some early test animations, back from when their rigs were ugly.