Character Re-Design and Rough Animation

I scrapped my idea for the pumpkin. I found illustrating the pumpkin design very difficult and I didn't understand how to illustrate objects like wings and feathers as well as the pumpkin itself; using a simpler design would make it easier in the long run to illustrate and animate.

I liked the use of wings from the previous design so I decided to incorporate something similar into this character, I used sharper and more menacing looking wings. The main contrast in this image is that a ghost has wings, a figure that is normally seen to float freely through the air on its own. I felt as if this would lead to an interesting animation with charm.

I also drew 30 frames of this animation on paper and scanned them all onto the computer. Drawing these frames was difficult because it was hard to judge sometimes to what degree an element should move (such as the wings flapping or the eyes moving around). I've uploaded these scanned images and uploaded them to my DropBox (online file storage). They can be downloaded in a packaged Zip file by clicking on the DropBox logo on the left of the page (135 Mb download).



This is the rough animation of my character. I took all of the images and placed them in a chronological image sequence using Adobe Premier Pro (this can also be done with Final Cut) to create the illusion of motion when played back at 12 frames per second. I don't think this particular animation is as fluid as it could be but I think that's down to the low frame rate, I also attempted to make quite subtle movements which didn't translate very well.

I tried to animate the following properties of the character:

• Have the wings flap in unison.
• Have the character as a whole float up and down as if it is using its wings to hover
• Have the character slightly rotate to imply it doesn't hover completely still
• Have the eyes blink and move around

This version does not have to be final, everything is subject to change in the digitally animated version but I would like to keep the overall ideas I listed above the same.