Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Bunny Rabbit's New Look!

        When I designed the original Bunny almost 4 years ago, I was just starting to learn digital painting in Photoshop.  I wanted to see if I could animate a single image without having to draw the character multiple times.  And so, based on a single fully rendered image,  I edited it by cutting, distorting and pasting the character's body parts to create the different poses of  the action. Any additional drawings needed was kept to the minimum.  I achieved what I wanted at the time. 

   

New cleaner design
      Since then, my understanding of the built-in timeline have improved and so is my character design sense. It's been awhile since I've animated in Toon Boom that I have already forgotten how to use it.  Photoshop is not my ideal animation application to use, but it can do simple animation loop like this well enough that can be exported to GIF easily.   So I decided to use Photoshop instead.



New lighter color with some pink added.
     

         So last weekend, I decided to give Bunny Rabbit a new look and new animation.  The old version was a 10-drawing cycle.  This time, I added more drawings, cleaner lines, and a more streamlined design.  I drew the face and body with a more feminine look.  The head is more triangular, reminiscent of  Kisses chocolates. The eyes are also triangular to complement the overall shape. The eyebrows are thinner, the lashes longer and more pronounced.
        Instead of the skipping animation cycle of the old version, I animated the thumping foot from one side to the next, reminiscent of Thumper's foot thumping in the Disney classic film Bambi. This bunny is inspired by Thumper after all.



A 26-drawing animation cycle.
A more feminine design
The animation is a bit longer now with 26 drawings. Instead of editing from a single fully rendered image, I did it just like how I would do it if it's done traditionally.  Line key poses were animated first, then in-between drawings were added after. Once the timing of the action  was done, colors were added in.


FX and Drop Shadows added

        I kept the original theme of the blue bordered box to contain the bunny, for continuity reasons. Who knows, this might still evolved in the future.  I added some FX and Drop Shadow elements on top of the finished animation to help it pop out more from the blue background.  This wouldn't be complete without the Pixie dusts, so I reused the old dust animation cycle but changed its timing. It's now a bit slower and dragging a bit. 

        And so.... here's the new, improved animated icon of this blog.

Bunny Rabbit Pixie Dust logo










































No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for dropping by, would love to hear from you ...