Haunting Melody Animation Process (Part 2)

In the last blog entry, I describe how I completed the first milestone in my “layered” animation process for Haunting Melody. This is a follow up discussing the additional layers that have gone into the animation. Namely hand drawn elements and some claymation.

For the hand drawn elements, I decided it would be best to work on the ones that are in the foreground first. That way, I would have a better idea of what color the backgrounds (which I plan on adding last) should be. But I did make a few exceptions, particularly if the backgrounds are animated. (Two of them are.)

The most gratifying thing about beginning to work on these elements is seeing how the different mediums combine with each other. Here are some images showing this.

“But now it’s got perverted. / I think I want to barf!”

“Oh man, I hate that strain of melody!!”

“Like a fart from a derriere!”

And here’s an example of one of the moving backgrounds I animated.

For claymation, I animated three sequences so far, but I have a total of seven sequences planned. Below is some of the sculpting I have done.

The mouth on this sculpture was quite heavy, so it kept falling off when I was trying to animate it. This meant I had to sculpt a new mouth that would animate more easily.

A new mouth sculpture, fastened in place with toothpicks, made for a much smoother process.

For one sequence, I made three different sets of eyes, each progressively squashed and stretched. This was to create the illusion of rapid movement as the character’s head moves rapidly.

And that’s all for this part of the process!

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