The first, what I consider major, animation project of mine. I've been drawing this little fellow called Fuzzy for some years now and already made a quick draft of a storyboard quite a while ago. The problem for me with animation, prior to this work, was actually getting my hands dirty with the process. Mainly due to lack of time and knowledge it just felt like a big learning curve to complete something like this. I had the ideas but was busy with something else to figure out the tools.

During the process my goal was to gain confidence working in 3D environment of Blender, and fundamentals of an animation practice in general.

First thing to do is a proper storyboard and planning of the process. This really helps to keep everything togeteher during the process. After storybording I made an animatic adaptation to determine the lenghts of each individual animation sequence.

Although Blender is often associated as a 3D modelling program it has excellent capabilites for traditional frame-by-frame animation as well. I tried to model and rig a 3D Fuzzy I felt the character was more suited for traditional 2D animation. The 2D animation of the character is done in Blender using Grease Pencil and keyframes. Although animating by drawing each frame is really time consuming I found it overall fun to do. This was also a great way to learn some of the fundamentals in animation. Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit was a helpful tool I kept on the table during the process.

Backdrops were done in 3D and the end result is a mixed media animation experience. Final animation is composed in After Effects with couple of stylistic tricks to emulate the old school rubber hose style of animation with hand drawn and colored cells.

Lastly, the sound design is done on top of the animation. To speed up the process I asked my friend to help me out jamming the soundtrack. It's utter most rewarding to add the sound and to see and hear the animation completed and the character full of life.