Animated Animals

10 min readMar 30, 2021

Storyboarding

The story begins with the black footed ferret in its natural habitat: prairie dog burrows. Upon viewing their prey, the prairie dog, it leaps into the burrow and a running scene ensues. Once it emerges, however, the predator is immediately disrupted by a man-made tractor. The video then sobers to a wide pan of human intervention, with tractors littering the newly-created agricultural fields and smoke billowing in the distance.

Essentially, my animation would be primarily composed of four scenes:

Ferret sees prairie dog, jumps in burrow (perspective transition to birds-eye view during jump)
Running through the underground burrow (very VERY action heavy, extreme zoom and changes in perspective)
Jump out of burrow, tractor passes by (sporadic, jarring)
Composition of agricultural/human development (large-scale, wide zoom)

Experimentation

4/1/21

Given that we only have 20 seconds in our animation, I started with planning my animation in Procreate. This will help me on timing and planning various perspectives.

Next I recreated a few basic backgrounds on Illustrator. After all, I can always go back and add detail to them.

I overlayed the sketch animation onto the practice backgrounds, and those became my foundational reference in After Effects.

I then practiced animating the movement of the ferret. There will be times when I have to use frame by frames, so I imagined what I wanted Scene 2 to look like perspective- and action-wise

Finally, I tried a frame by frame vector animation on After Effects. This is essentially just using the software as a compilation tool, rather than taking full advantage of its uses and tools.

Planning + Asset Creation

4/6/21

I decided to make a list of all assets I should create to organize my animation better. This way, I can sort through what needs to be created frame-by-frame v.s. with the software.

I then created three of the main backgrounds for scenes 1 and 3.

I decided to work on the first and third scene in the beginning, since they were some of the easiest to execute (theoretically).

Sound recommendations:

Weigh in “Pitter patter” vs ambient sound (example: just walk into Schenley to get the wind, white noise)
Suggestions: bike on dirt
(look up radio foly)
TRACTOR: Old tractors don’t have a good suspension (they don’t go directly forward the way the storyboard shows it
Broken unsound effect: two layers with an uneven wheel?
TUNNEL: Sound of running is faint and get’s louder then quieter
Low pass filter to muffle sounds

Creating Scene 3

4/12/21

I concluded that while the first scene could (mostly) be completed with the puppet tool, the third scene is likely too complex for that, and I should use frame-by-frames instead.

I then created the tractor, which will emerge in front.

I created a mask for the burrow so that it would look like the ferret is emerging from it, and rotated the wheels of the tractor. Later on, I also added accent colors to the tractor for greater definition. This way, it wouldn’t just look like a blank, semi-black silhouette.

I then used the sketch animation I drew on procreate as reference for placing and timing.

Creating Scene 1

4/15/21

For the first scene, I took a single frame and used the puppet tool to give the illusion of movement. I also created an ear-twitching movement so that the animal was more realistic and less stiff.

During the crouch position, I then quickly switched to another frame, allowing a seamless transition between poses. I added small puppet frames of the body and bend, giving moments of anticipation.

Afterwards, I put the isolated animation on top of the first background, and created a mask so that it would appear to “pop out” of the burrow.

Afterward the crouch, I shifted the scene to a top view perspective. This allows the viewer to see ferret actually jumping into the burrow.

I also created a new asset from the top perspective and used masks to have it “jump” in.

I tried to use the low frame rate to my advantage by immediately shifting to a drastic perspective change. The position movement of the top leaping pose, as well as the zoom in of the burrow hole, helps distract the viewer from the background shifts.

Creating Scene 4

4/16/21

I stopped beating around the bush and began working on the final scene, which arguably has the most complex background compared to the rest.

Because this scene showcases human intervention and the reason for endangerment, I added a contrasting, sickly green color to represent unfamiliarity and danger.

Initially, the silos and mills were much smaller. However, that makes the scale of the burrows rather tall (which logically, doesn’t make sense since the tractor in Scene 3 was so close to level ground). Thus, I sized up the assets to give it more realistic perspective.

Final scene assets: ferret, tractor, smoke

I created assets that would have to be animated separately, and threw them in as well. Overall, I wanted this scene to be seen as a stimulation overload; while prior backgrounds were mostly peaceful and still, this one was constantly moving, action-packed, and scaled so that the animal — which was initially viewed as the main focus — is suddenly much, much smaller.

4/17/21

I finally started working on scene 2, which would arguably be the most difficult due to the change in perspective and running animation.

I then created a main body asset that I would plan to puppet. Given that this scene is underground, I gave it a darker, blue-purple fur undertone.

The difficult part of this scene is the moving background alongside the changing perspective, as well as the change in scale. Thus, for the change in perspective when it turns to show the backside, I created a few new assets and changed to frame by frame. To avoid the jarring change in poses, I puppeted a few slightly and rotated the body for ease in movement.

I then implemented the background and zoomed in on both that and the ferret. My reasoning would be that, not only would the shot look more dynamic, but it also gives greater action, drama, and speed.

By utilizing position changes, scale, and zooms, I can give the illusion of an off-camera turn. This gives a more action-packed sequence that zooms in on the ferret (and also allows me to avoid drawing another frame; I was getting quite tired :’)

I then inserted this scene in between Scene 1 and Scene 3 to see how smoothly it would transition.

FEEDBACK FROM DAPHNE:

- To make clear that the ferret is leaving it’s current hole and going to the other one, it has to slightly come out of its current hole before the camera cuts away. As it is now, it just disappears, and then there’s a single shot of an empty hole, that I don’t understand. See if you can think about a couple small changes that will clarify this interaction.

- The ferret is “off camera” a little too long when making the turn in the tunnel

4/18/21

I started incorporating the compositions all together, and created a few masks and position changes so that the scene changes weren’t too jarring.

I also rasterized each scene for higher quality.

Then, I added camera zooms, extra rotational changes, and small changes in background scale to incorporate seamless transitions and greater engagement throughout the animation.