Animating The Robin

Animating the Robin, was in some ways easier because this character had less components to it's body. However it did require a lot more changes in emotion and body language. I also included a lot of secondary motion and anticipation where necessary. This was becuause it would add to the comedy element but also to the Robin's appeal, because from the start we knew we wanted this to be a very cute "squishy" character.

There were two key moments where this was applied. One of which is where the Robin is pulling at a worm in the ground. I decided that as the character leans forwards, I wanted to make her belly squish outwards, to give the impression of how little and chubby she is.

Also, in a later scene, she hops backwards three times. Just before she leaves the ground, I added some anticipation by having her compress downwards, to show that she is preparing to jump, and this would add more spring to her bounce. I didn't just incorporate this to her body, I also added it to the feathers on the top of her head, to show that they are effected by the movement of her body. Both Emma and I felt that this would make this character more believable and more loveable. 

Phonemes

Since this character had a much smaller body than the Boar, obviously this would mean that her beak was very small too. With the shape of her mouth it was very difficult to come up with phonemes for certain sounds such as "Eee" and "Rrr". After creating the first few necessary mouth shapes, I realised that I could reuse some of them for other sounds. This made the whole process look much simpler, and it still had the same result. 

The main shapes I used were "Aaa" "Uuu" "Ttt" and "Ooo" because after experimenting I realised these could all be used for other sounds too. 

Fills

When it came to creating the fills, it was just the same as it was with the Boar, however it was slightly faster, because there was less to colour, and there was less movement with this character. When it came to adding the fills on both characters, I changed the background colour just so ensure that I wasn't making a mess of it!