Week something or other: 15 second animation PART ONE (OUAN403)

We've been tasked to create a ten to fifteen second animation based around one of a selection of words. I chose "surprise", but I think I went about it wrong. Rather than choosing the word and then thinking of an animation that accompanies it, I just thought of something that would be funny to animate and found the word that would best justify it.

I decided to tell a story of two young rascals who throw rocks at a hornets' nest, but in doing so unbalance the tree so it falls over and crushes them. Were I to go back, I probably would've given it more thought as there are so many other possibilities for great concepts based around these words, but oh well. The main thing I'm focussing on is learning how to do basic digital animation with this project, which is a steep learning curve as I have never done it before.

One frame from my storyboard

When I visualised this animation, I was reminded of the kinds of videos made by Bird Box studio, who do simple short films with a really understated art style and great comedy timing, which is similar to what I'm trying to accomplish with this 15 second animation. I took inspiration from their distinctive character design. 

I would like to emulate an aesthetic similar to this for this project. It has charm and personality.

The biggest problems I've faced so far have all been technical, involving stuff like digital painting with the Wacom tablet, which is another reason why I'm keen to start off with an animation like this, which is straightforward with an unchanging camera angle. but I'm really loving using layers on Photoshop to create detailed backgrounds that I never could have made before without having to redraw them on every new frame. The animatic went well, and now all I need to do is animate it!