Thursday 26 January 2012

Other line tests



First quick attempts on animating Feeble.

Clucky sweep line test

                                       
This is just a line test for the shot where clucky will be sweeping. I think it just needs a few more frames and then the timing should be right...

Saturday 21 January 2012

The beginning of the final push!

This is my new blog dedicated to the production of my animation entitled 'Feeble's Attempt'. The original title was 'Be My Birdy', but my new title is much more suited to the story.

Let me start with were the idea came from...

Whilest attending FMX animation festival in Stuttgart I came across a postcard that amused me very much. I loved the expression of 'no nonsense' on the gooses face. It led me to draw my own doodle of how I thought the goose would react to the fox trying to kiss her. So I came up with this...


This led me to fall in love with the idea of a Fox falling in love with a bird. I changed the idea to the fox lusting after a chicken... A chicken suits my personality better (or so I have been told). So that was my own spin on things which then allowed me to develop my own characters and narrative based on the images above.

So the plot outline...

My intension was to tell a story of what a fox may do to persue a chicken should he happen to fall in love with her. Even though I am a stop motion animation student I have decided that this story would be better told in a 2D tradtional medium. I thought the concept would be a tad more interesting than if he just wanted to eat her. Instead he would have to be craftey to show his affections. I came up with the name Feeble for my fox as that is how he looked. As he is a vegetarian he is not as strong or well built as a fox that would live on meat. This also explains why he wants to kiss the chicken (named Clucky) and not eat her.
The story is supposed to show his 'feeble attempts' to woo Clucky. Here is the early character designs I had for the pair.


They have now evolved into this final designs...

Here are the final colour designs for Clucky and Feeble.

What Inspired me?

I looked over a number of old Looney Tunes cartoons. I really wanted this animation to have a traditional feel to it.

Screen grab from Foghorn Leghorn cartoon "Little Boy Boo" (1954)


Screen grab from Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon "Fastest with the Mostest" (1960)

These characters really helped me with the animation style I wanted for my characters.

Now that I have gone over how they came about in my head, I shall be looking for 2nd year animation students to help me make this animation.