Today I have been drawing the keys for my dog walk cycle and Stanley putting his hands out to stop the dog.

This is the line test of my second shot where stanley gets splashed by a puddle.

I am now going to start on my car shots. I have been taking photos of cars from a high angle camera for my first shot as the viewer will see the tops of the cars as if looking down at them from a window.

Today I made the water effects for my second shot when a car drives through a puddle and splashes stanley! I am really pleased with the way this one came out as it was hard to find the right angle to aim the water as the car drives through it.

This is some of the progress ive been making with my beginning shots. I've re-done some of the drawings to make the actions more expressive.

I am attemtping a dog panting today which is not a very easy task. I have researched the movement by looking at the recent pixar film Up and the actions of the character 'Dug' as he is a similar shape to my Herbert character. Dug is full of expression and life just like a real dog and i want to bring this vitality into my character. I have taken screen shots from a particular scene in Up where the viewer is introduced to Dug and he is full of enthusiasm for his new friends. The way this shot has been animated makes you feel like you're looking at a real dog.

This is a quick line test of the keys for my dog walk over the camera!

Following the research I made into a dog walking over a camera I have started the keys for my character Herbert walking off the curb and over the camera. Here are some production shots of these key frames.

This is my special dog walk cycle that I screen printed from my partners dog Tasha walking over my small ipod camera, to get this movement for shot 3.

These are some production photos of the 3rd shot. The dog is sitting on the road side happily wagging his tail and this shot will be followed by a dog walk cycle with a twist. The dog will walk over the camera, so will be filmed from below looking up. I have thus been videoing my partners dog walking over an ipod camera to get the motion, action and perspective correct to apply to Herbert(my dog character) when I animate that shot.

Ive started looking at the movements and behaviour attributes of dogs so when i animate Herbert I can have a more realistic looking dog. I took video of my partners dog in different sitting poses and then screen printed them to take still images.
I will soon be taking some different video to get a wider view.

This week I started animating my first shots of Stanley sitting in the street after losing his job. Here is how the first of my animation keys look.

These are a sample of my finished backgrounds ranging from the exterior street backgrounds the garden and the living room and kitchen. I started out drawing the finished backgrounds in stratchy pen lines and then scanned and coloured them in photoshop to achieve the effect i have now.

my up to date schedule

Here is the score sheets of the music composed for my film which has also been added to my moving animatic.

I have since finished my backgrounds and put them into my moving animatic and should be ready to start animating.