Little shaman fire dance going on..!

concept art - mask character

Here the little mask is making the story of the disappearing bees appear in the smoke from a candle..

character animation test

I was planning to use the puppet tool for animating this hand drawn puppet but I ended up in a right mess as I had all the parts on layers and they warped and bent when I attempted to move them individually. I then decided to add parenting to the body parts linking them together and moved them frame by frame on the time line instead. This made it much easier to keep everything moving together. I think the puppet tool is useful but doesn't allow for so much movement because of the distortion.

scene test after effects CS5

Test 1 - Quick scene test using aftereffects - particle effects to create a burning camp fire. Needs some tweaking as the flames are burning far too quickly! I also want a flickering to affect the flames for a more realistic fire. Because I have used the puppet tool though there is quite a lot of distortion in the little character as his arms move which is not great. Its also been suggested that the sitting down shaman character moves too much and it should be much more subtle.

concept sheet - puppet little mask character

I have started to create the body parts for one of the main characters which will be animated - puppet style in after effects now as I am using this software to produce the composition in layers and adding special effects too so it makes sense to try and keep everything working - minimising the risk of things not working together in the final scenes.

Because the look of the animation is mixed media.. I want this character to look home made so Ive decided he will be hand drawn and textured to look like wood. Ive also thought about how he is put together and the mechanics that will affect how he moves.