Project 3 – Follow the White Rabbit Character Animation

For this project I was aiming to create a character animation while still catering it too my style. I began early on looking through different websites for characters I could use and settled on a temporary idea until I hopefully found something else. I found an artist who had created a collection of Alice in Wonderland inspired illustrations which I liked and I began working on cutting the characters out in Photoshop. I used the same illustrations for my draft but I found it hard to animate her without her looking messy and distorted. But I liked that I was going for an Alice in wonderland theme. I looked for a easier alternative and was able to find a set of vectors that was inspired by Alice in Wonderland and began working with those assets. I really liked the style of them compared to other cartoon vectors. The artist had made black and white versions as well as colored versions of the characters and backgrounds which gave me the idea of having the animation be black and white and turn colorful at the end.

Story description: In a black and white world a girl wakes up as someone is stealing her key. She catches the key and continues to follow the white rabbit who hasn’t realized that he dropped the key. She goes through strange things before finally getting to the rabbit, they open the door and the world becomes colorful.

Updated mood board link – Character design link

I began with Photo Shop and cut out all the characters, face features, arms, legs etc. I also cut out backgrounds and furniture. The collection of assets I was using didn’t have any furniture I could use so I tried to find furniture that matched and turned it black and white.

Earlier drafts of animating face features. Scary.

After gathering characters and some of the backgrounds began working on After Effects. I incorporated using the camera in the introduction, an idea I had from the previous assets that I didn’t use for this project. I tried to use an image of a girl sleeping for the beginning part but it was too obvious that it wasn’t her.I found it hard to animate the body moving and looking back my character’s movements aren’t very consistent. Animating the face features was probably the most time consuming in the beginning, but it got easier and less time consuming with time. Though, the body movements remained tedious throughout. I lost two of my compositions that had face animation after After Effects crashed on me. Repeating them was frustrating, but I had a better idea of what I was doing. I also repeated some of the earlier face animations I did because she looked uneven and terrified. This could also have messed with the consistency of the character.

I added shadow lines to help distinctify the walls from the ground and also incorporated some camera movements to zoom on when Alice was shrinking, I think it added some interest in the shot. I tried to use the 3D effect but found layers would be harder to work with. I used it however for other items such as the key, bottle and doors.

Then came the fun part of sound design in Premiere pro! I was also exhausted at this point, but I added sound effects of the door opening, footsteps and items falling layered with music. Overall, I’m happy with the final animation with the vectors I found. Some of the things I could have improved on was the transition from when Alice shrank and went through the tiny door. Other improvements include animating her walking better.

Link to composition layers

Link to Follow the White Rabbit