The audio was from a Youtube channel called OneyPlays. The inspirations for the animation style were Danny Antonucci and David Feiss. You can see the influence in the linework and movements.
I used a number of smear frames in the animation to show the speed of the change of expressions.
I had the animation of the character-acting stay relatively normal for most of the video, as the tone of the voice is at normal levels, until the end of the video where the audio explodes into laugher. There, I had drawn very over exaggerated faces to help with the audio. I tried to play with the colors to heighten the emotion of the shots, such as the character’s face becoming pure red during the laughing fit.
I had a low angle shot of the character with his hand poking towards the 2 bugs. I did this to show off the size difference of the characters as well as work on my perspective skills, with the hand becoming bigger the closer it is to the bugs. To add to the scene, I added the bugs and fire in the foreground and clouds in the background.
Other ways I added to the backgrounds of the animation included small animations with fewer frames featuring the bug eating and the fire it’s sitting beside.
I sketched out the mouths. When I had a mouth that made the same shape as the next word the character says, I changed the size slightly to the previous one so that they don’t stay the same dimensions and so I don’t reuse the drawing.
I had a bit of trouble making the sideview mouth of the character look right originally through the sketches, but when I lined and colored them, they came out looking better. I gave the face more dimension in the linework so the chin and jaw move along with the mouth.
I put everything in Adobe Premiere Pro and exported it. This is what the finished version looked like.
After I was done, I sent it to my tutor to get feedback. I was given a few things that I could improve on. The biggest change I made was made to a shot in the animation of the 2 bugs talking to each other, as I was told that the blocking was off and the composition was cluttered.
I changed the shot to have the characters further apart and since they were sitting beside a fire, I had a light shine on them every few seconds to make the shot more interesting.
Another thing I added was making the character’s hair flip when turning his head. In the original, his hair was sticking out to the side, so I added more dimension to the hair by having it poke out more towards the screen.
I added transition drawings for the last drawing in the animation, so that it flows better when looping.
I finally changed a single mouth frame and I was done. I edited it all together in Premiere and exported it.
I like how the animation came out. I felt the mouth movements sync up well and I had fun with the compositions, color, facial expressions and small details in the animation. However, I do feel like I could’ve added more movement to the characters.