Scene 2 of the Mystery Work in Progress is coming along nicely. (I’m only on scene 2! Dear God, when will it end?!)

Scene 1 was pretty much done when it became apparent a major character redesign was needed. At every step of the process, the characters have asserted their “robotness,” even though I wanted to make them very organic and bendy like the original sketches. They just seem to want to move and act like machines. I think it serves the story well, so I’m letting it happen. And by “letting,” I mean struggling through hours and hours of painful trial and error. But in the past week I’ve stumbled on bodies that are beginning to work, and am nearly done reworking scene 1 and some of scene 2.

In the early stages of animation on a short, it takes a while to get the rhythm of the characters. So there tends to be a lot of “over-acting” which mellows out as I move along. (get lazy)

To the right is a still from scene 2. I didn’t want to spoil anything, so I shrunk it down a little.