Characters side 02

Today I started and finished the side view of the girl and the emu. So now I have the front and side views of each character. Before I can use any of them in After Effects I first have to resave a file at a smaller size, probably seperate files for each character and remove any unnecessary layers to avoid clutter.

Characters side 01

Today I used my broken up front views of the characters to create side views of the characters. So far I have managed to complete the baby emu and the boy.

Animatic 12

Today I converted all of my "scenes" into compositions. So each scene is a seperate composition, but all put together in the main composition. I made some mostly minor changes to some of the backgrounds. I also animated the characters' eyes in the cave in the center of the animation. That scene is now my first completed scene, excluding the first and last which consist only of the background.

Animatic 11

Today I finished adding all of my backgrounds to my animatic. Before doing that I had to edit quite a few of them. I created seperate files for each background, regardless of whether the same image appears more than once, so that it will be easier to make changes later. (Instead of 26 backgrounds I have 46 - one for each scene)

I also added sunsets to some of my other backgrounds for towards the end of the animation. I haven't completely decided when the sun should set in my animation. It could either stay where it is, or be earlier (after they leave the cave), or later either after they have been in the tree for a while, or else not until they are out of the tree. This will be a matter or opinion and experimentation.

I also fixed up the issue with the flame background, changing the many layers of copies to only three layers with altering opacity levels. I still plan to work on the timing of the flames, slow them down a bit.

And this is my animatic so far, with all of the aforementioned changes:

Painting Backgrounds 4

I finished painting the last of my backgrounds over the last couple of days. Some I will edit in Photoshop a bit, to change the colouring and change the blue sky to sunset.

Painting Backgrounds 3

Today I painted the equilalent of another 5 backgrounds.
I tried experimenting with the paint for the children's drawing. I did the ground for the base. Then painted the drawing seperately, first painting it to look like scribbles in the ground, but that didn't work. So I got out some yellow acrylic paint, smeared it over one of the frames and draw into it using the end of my paintbrush. This could have worked but would have been more effective if the paper had been painted a darker colour than yellow before applying the acrylic.
So I tried another version where the frame was painted brown, and smeared some of the yellow left on my paintbrush onto it, but in a thinner layer. This was much more effective, as it was also easier to draw thinner lines with less paint.
I will probably use a combination of the frames, using masking and other tools to combine them to get the desired effect.

Animatic 10

So today I cropped the backgrounds I painted yesterday and put them into my animatic. I had to make a slight timing adjustment to them going into the cave but other than that it seems to be working quite well with the new backgrounds.

Animatic 09

And my animatic with those first few painted backgrounds added to it:

Painting Backgrounds 2

Yesterday I added the backgrounds I painted yesterday into my animatic. Today I painted another 5 backgrounds. The landscape, cave, tree and Uluru. So I've done around half of the backgrounds already.

Painting Backgrounds 1

I went through my animatic and took note of scene numbers and where I'll need different backgrounds. I have around 25 backgrounds to create.
Today I started painting some of those backgrounds. I have done 5 so far. The dark screen for inside the cave, the coloured backgrounds that will be behind the characters when they see the bird eating their food, the fire that will be behind the emu when it's angry - including 3 different paintings to try to animate it; one turned out too muddy rather than orange so I might not use it. The background along the bottom is the ground that will go past behind the emu chick while it's running away with the pouch of food.