Art Style/Character Designs
I knew what kind of art style I wanted to try out, which was the classic Disney style a.k.a the "rubber hose animation" style, but at the same time I wanted to make it my own. These are some character designs I did of my family's pet bunny in a "rubber hose-like" style, as well as our pet birds and a pig character that I created for the story. As I was creating these characters and their world to live in I listened to a lot of music from the 50's just to immerse myself into that kind of world as much as I could.
This is my mood board I created to give my style a personality of its own. I mentioned that I wanted that "classic Disney Mickey Mouse" style but make it as my own, so I took inspiration in that and other cartoony art styles, some more obscure like the "Larryboy: The Cartoon Adventures" TV show. The images in this mood board have bright, cartoony characters with tons of personality, which was exactly what I was aiming for. Same thing goes for the environment; where the characters live and where my story takes place. I took inspiration from "Mickey's Toontown" and "Toontown Online" where the buildings, roads, and even inanimate objects such as fire hydrants have personality and charm, as well as a timeless look and feel.
Storyboard
The storyboards went through lots of changes, because the script was going through lots of changes. I was not sure where to take this story; whether I should make it more simple, more complex, add more characters, have an actual evil antagonist, ideas like that. But I put together a simple, funny, light hearted story with a good message. These are a few of the final storyboards.
Early Test Animations
I wanted to choose a scene where quite a lot of movement occurs, so I chose the opening scene where Walter opens the door, walks out, then the door hits him and he stumbles. Here are some test animations of that sequence.
This was one of the first test animations I did for this project. The two big things that changed are the camera angle and the length of the clip. The test still gets the point across well with very little animation.
I watched and studied different walk cycles from different cartoon characters that have a similar body to Walter, and this is the personality walk I got. I tried to show as much of his character possible in his walk, this kind of "chip on his shoulder" look.
This test has the new camera angle, the new walk cycle and some coloured, more detailed frames in the walk cycle. This is where I started to get more excited to see the final product.
The Final Product
This is the whole thirteen second clip of my final project. It took a long time and a lot of hard work, but I believe I made something unique, fun with lots of personality and charm. Like I mentioned before, I am currently working on animating the whole short film. But until then, this is the final product.
