I think my body acting exercise might be my best one so far! I’m really happy with the way my character moves, I feel it captures the comedy and ‘sneakiness’ of her character, while not over-exaggerating. I was previously told that my character reminds others of the adventure time style (especially proportions-wise), so I looked briefly into their style of animation, and tried to take a bit of inspiration from that and mix it into my own natural style that seems to come out when I am animating.

Style is something that has been an interesting thing to navigate throughout starting this course. As an illustrator, finding a recognisable way of working was a big part of my focus on my BA, but with animation it isn’t like that! I need to be able to adapt to other styles, draw in lots of different ways. I have found stopping the illustrator part of me from focusing on the character design and finish of the design above animating is quite hard to push down, but I’m working on it.

(Sometimes the simplest answer is the best! Steve mentioned that it needed to be clearer that she was stealing a sweet from a trick-or-treating bowl. Best solution?: write ‘trick or treat’ on the side of it; sorted.)

Facial acting is the exercise that I’ve had the most fun on. I went into uni that day just wanting to have a good time. What I came out with was essentially a short (short) film that sums up almost every morning of mine. It feels like a bit of a different intention to my previous work; more about getting across a joke or point than focusing on silky smooth animation. I do feel there is still a space for this stylisation though. When I think about shows like Adventure Time, they have this snappier feeling.

On reflection, I actually found animating the dog walking here (as well as the short clip of the feet) much easier than I did the walk cycles the weeks prior, and I think think is due to them being on an angle. Something about that flat-lay format of walk cycles before I found quite difficult to translate in my head, perhaps because it’s something you see very rarely in real life.

I could see myself taking this gag further and working more from it in the coming months. I just love a good, relatable slice of life moment with a dog that makes you go: “I do that!”