Extended Production: Rough Animation "When you dropped the spyglass"

I began animating one of the major dialogue scenes, this was the most complex with the amount of movement and lip sync that was needed in the scene. Using photoshop to animate with, I began by resizing the composition of the frame, changing it from the original storyboarded version. I found that the storyboarded version was quite flat with the depth and space in the frame. I wanted to change this and add extra movement to the scene as the dialogue would be at least 12 seconds and I wanted to make this amount of time more interesting than the shadow just hovering next to Cy.

I decided to make Dusk move around Cy, with Cy following his movements. I wanted to make Dusks movements more interesting with wisps and smoke like pieces fragmenting from him as he moves from one position to another. I wasn't sure how to start the animation at first, so I went back to my research and looked at my visual moodboard on pinterest. After being inspired, I was motivated to begin the process. I started with straight lines coming from the shadow but I immediately knew that this wasn't going to work with both the shapes used in Dusks body and the depth that I wanted to create in the animation. After gaining feedback from a fellow student, Alex, she suggested starting with three blobs coming from Dusk's body. I quite liked this idea and I adapted it to swirling around Dusk's body before beginning to break off from as he moves.

I really liked my first test of this movement it worked really nicely and faded out smoothly, I knew that I would later have to change the colour of the wisps to work with the colour scheme of the characters. However I felt that the position that Dusk moves too close which didn't give that illusion of depth in the frame. I decided to move this position further behind Cy. This worked more successfully then I had anticipated as I added more movement to Cy's animation and with both of them moving, it felt more completed for the viewer to watch; more visually appealing.

I then made Dusk move further behind Cy, so that he would end up on the left side of the frame. This worked successfully, as I delayed Cy's reaction to this movement and had him move a second after. Adding this will allow me to add more secondary animation to the piece. I really liked it and after gaining feedback from my peers I knew that I needed to extend the time before he moves to the final position so that the lip sync will work with Dusks movement.