Heya Toonsters!
Thanks again for stopping by.
Recently, I started picking back up "Re-Animated" Projects. A "Re-Animated" Project is the animation trend going around where several animators will get together and everyone will re-animate a scene in a movie or tv series. Basically, each animator gets a few second shot, and they have the creative freedom to "Re-Animate" this in their style. It is a really fun way to stretch your creative animation muscles and skills, while networking with other animators, as well as getting your name on a big project many eyes will see. It's a win for everyone! It's all voluntary, so it's really just to practice your work and have fun.
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was a favorite cartoon of mine in the 90s. Yes, the goofy one. I thought it was just super fun and I was always a big Sonic fan. Anyway, I of course wanted to be a part of the project for this one, where they are re-creating the entire episode. The Twitter account is @Aosthr
I had to ask for a shot of my favorite character, the one and only 2 tailed fox- Tails!
The scene that I received was a pretty simple shot of Breezie & Tails peeking out of a cave.
So the first thing that I did was create a sketch of Tails.
I usually do the initial sketch in Photoshop. This was also when I wanted to have Tails saying "Everything will be okay" hence why I drew him using the "okay" sign here. I wanted to give him the modern Tails design, as that's one of my favorite designs of him. After I created the initial sketch, I brought this into Adobe Animate (Formerly Flash) So I could draw and build the puppet rig. Eye blinks, mouth movements and such. I did a practice animation of it
After that, I created the background in Photoshop, mainly to give it lots of details. Since backgrounds don't usually move, I like creating backgrounds in Photoshop. It think it's a fun style to have detailed backgrounds with bright animated characters that POP!
I built the background in 2 layers- the foreground to cover them, and the background was just the background of the cave. The foreground had the "hole" where they were going to peek out of.
Since they were in the side of the cliff, I decided to add my own Steven Universe reference from "The Kindergarten" where there were several holes that gems emerged from.
So now that I had the background and Tails built, it was time for Breezie. I did the same thing. Sketched her in Photoshop, then built & rigged her in Adobe Animate.
This one was fun to draw. She had a fun design, plus curvy women are just fun to draw in general. Next, I brought her into Animate, and did a sample animation of her by herself.
Eye blinks, head and hair movements, and of course the lip sync. What fun! Now it just comes time to put it all together. I layered in Tails, Breezie & the background all together. Breezie was already animated. I had done a practice animation with Tails, but he wasn't going to be saying anything. I just took his puppet rig and plopped him in with Breezie, and animated a bit of reaction. Eye blinks, looking at Breezie, head tilt. While I also had her come in. Voila! The piece is finished!
So that's my process for how I created this scene for the re-animated project! It was super fun, and now I have simple puppet rigs of Tails & Breezie I could use for future animations if I wanted! The rigs only consist of simple eye blinks and mouth movements, nothing complex just yet like head turns, but I love having these assets.
Thanks for stopping by to check out my process! Be sure to toon in for more of my work!
As always, stay TOONed!