For this assignment I already had an audio in mind that I could use to create my animation. My other ideas were very basic and not as well thought out and I felt as though I was already making a decision on using the audio I first had in mind. The audio is from Disney’s live action musical into the woods where the wolf sings to red riding hood. I thought about scenarios in which I could put characters into relating to the song, so I began story boarding. The story boards are extremely rough, and I added in some parts that would fit in time to the music, in my animatic the wolf tries to distract red riding hood as he attempts to steal her basket, ending with red riding hood pulling out a comedically large bat and hitting him with it.
When it came to the character designs, I wanted to make very simple cartoony designs so I could try and push the animation, drawing red riding hood was the easiest design as I already had an idea of what I wanted her to look like in my head, and I gave her the classic red riding hood dress and red hood. The wolf was the more challenging design, I wanted him to look shady like a con man and to have a wolf’s head and a more humanoid body. Trying to make a stylistic wolf head also have a personality was very challenging, I realised I might have trouble drawing this wolves head over and over again since I’m not used to drawing this type of character, so I decided to draw his head from every angle to make it easier for myself in the long run.
test animations-
story board-
(Some frames in incorrect order)
animatic-
For the animation I would film myself doing whatever action I wanted the character to do, of course some of the actions would have been impossible for me to try and recreate in real life but I tried my best to act out the basic movements. I wanted the animation to be nicely timed up to the music and to have a nice flow. Following my story board, I made sure to have the audio playing as I animated so I was able to Time the movements correctly, every now and again I would take the heads of the wolf I drew and pasted them onto my animation instead of having to redraw them every time, I think they ended up working pretty well. I also was given a tip by one of the tutors that when it comes to lip syncing, I don’t need to have the character sound out every letter the characters says, as long as I get the basic mouth shapes of the main sounds it would look synced up and this too helped me out a lot during the animation process.
The wolf in my opinion was the most fun character to animate which I was surprised by considering I’m not used to drawing animal characters, I really enjoyed animating his shady personality, like when he greets red riding hood, he slicks his fur on top of his hair back and gives her this big sort of sleezy smile.
feedback and notes-
I was given a lot of notes while making my animation. a note I was given which I have now attempted to fix was that the ending of my animation didn’t look coherent with the rest of my animation since In the beginning I had the camera moving and zooming in and doing something interesting, whereas at the end I just had a very straight shot of the two character facing each other and it was a bit anti-climactic. I fixed this by doing as the tutor instructed and having red riding hood very dramatically pulling out the giant bat with the wolfs shocked reaction in the background and then doing a huge jump from a Birds Eye view to hit the wolf and I think this ended up making the animation look way more interesting.
before
After-
When I began animating my first shot of the wolf stepping in front of red riding hood I was told that he was stepping in from the right a little bit too much and that he would look better if he was walking into frame straight forward to greet red riding hood. I think this looks way better now that I have fixed it and I added a camera edit where the camera moves up from his feet until you see his face to try and show off how tall and intimidating he is in comparison to red riding hoods tiny stature .
before–
after-
Another note I received was that in the shot where the wolf is pointing at the flowers, I had the wolf point at them and then it would cut to a shot of them in the field with the flowers. To fix this I was told it would be better if instead of a cut it would zoom out to the show the flowers, I like this edit because I feel as though it helped to ground the Characters a bit more and show they are in a forests field.I also later added a butterfly flying around the character just to Try to set the scene a bit more. A similar edit I made was that whenever the wolf points to the sun the clouds in the shot were still , this was annoying me because it didn’t look right so I just subtly made them move across the screen like real clouds
before–
After-
as I was almost finished with my animation I asked Sarah if there was any small things I could change to improve my animation before submission-
– the animation with the music when the girl is on screen feels static as there no lip synch
– clean up the step of him around the girl (the timing of motion is good)
– add frames/ smooth the girls lines at the end
– the last shot with the basket feels a little off , not much changing and the very end expression of him could go even more shocked.
I did my best to fix these before the submission.
before-
after–
One thing I regret is that I ended up not having enough time to add in some simple backgrounds that I had originally Had planned. However, after submitting this assignment, I plan to render out my animation more for my portfolio by adding backgrounds, cleaning up my animation and adding lighting and shadows.I would also like to add an establishing shot of red riding hood walking through the woods .
overall I think my animation turned out well,I feel like I really tried to do something a little bit different than what I usually do. Trying a more cartoony style and really pushing the body mechanics of the characters and also the added challenge of animating an animal character.
final animation-