Animating for Nick Sharratt - Part 1

On Wednesday the 28th of February, we began a new task of working alongside the well known illustrator, Nick Sharratt. This involves turning short stories from his book, "Vikings in the Supermarket," into short animations. These include backing tracks which we must animate to and time properly, before editing everything together.

We were given the opportunity to do one story each from Nick's book, and so I have the privilege of animating his short story "Fangsalot" - a story of a vampire bat that causes some trouble. I chose this one because I thought it would be fun to animate all the animals that appear within the story; also the soundtrack that accompanies it is very up-beat, so I can see myself enjoying it.

To begin with, we were given the original Photoshop files which includes all of the individual components we would need in order to animate. From this, I had to go through and break down the characters into different layers and separate things out such as their mouths and eyes, so that I can move them around and animate them individually. After doing this, it should be easier to move them within the program of ToonBoom - where you can create a rig on the character and move them like a puppet.

I am now in the process of putting together a storyboard and an animatic, which will then be sent on to Nick. I'll then receive some feedback and will be able to adapt anything he wants changing, before getting into the lengthy process of animating!

I'll update more as I go along!

Amy