Final animation

For the final animation I added a soundtrack from http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ to add a more jungle tribe theme to the animation. The music volume decreases during the slow-mos to add more effect:

Final shot

For the final shot the big character punches the screen, a.k.a the small character's face. To do this I had to make a new front view puppet with the limbs posed in a different fashion. Apart from that scenery was very minimal and the animation itself was quite simple:

Small character crawling

Going back to the story I made the shot of where the big character's shadow starts to loom over the small character on the floor. Originally the small guy turns around and looks at the big guy in direction top right, but I changed it so the small guy looks at the camera, laying on his back as he crawls backwards in fear:

To make the the silhouette I shaded half big character front puppet black and made a front view walk cycle:

Tripping and walking

I made a few changes to my story as my animation was heading very close to 30 seconds which was our limit (could be a little more if it needed to be). I decided to make the small character immediately trip over on a large stone, causing him to fall over:

Then the shot changes to a side shot of the big character walking to the small character on the floor, which I created using the side puppet:

Hit and miss

The next shot to be developed were the slow motion of the big character missing the small character. There were a couple of changes I made to make this shot possible:

1. I added an extra shot of the big guy stamping from the floor preparing the strike
2. Seeing as I had now made the big character unarmed, he now punches the character instead of swinging the club

Here is the shot of the big guy stamping his foot, where I had to make a side view puppet of the character which would come useful in the future:

Then I made the scene of the miss, where I created a PNG sequence of the big character punching his fist forward, whilst changing the animation in the skid scene so the character would bend backwards so his head just misses the big guy's fist:

Small character skidding

The problem I had with the previous post was quickly resolved when I added a quick 2 second scene referring back to the small character shocked at the big characters appearances, this was put in between the scene of the big character landing and big character roaring to let the animation flow a lot better:

I then moved onto the shot where the small guy begins to skid in attempt to avoid whatever the attack the big guy has in plan:

For this I took the 2D side shot of the small character running and tweak the animation a bit so his left foot would land on a skew and stay on the ground. I also made the body vibrate at this point to make show the effect of the small guy trying to slow down.

Big character front puppet

For the front view puppet of the big guy I made the body into 2 parts instead of one like the thin guy. This is because I wanted a more realistic effect when the character lands hard on the ground (a.k.a his chest squishes down a bit with the impact). It wasn't until I starting messing with the puppet that I realized I move the shoulders up and down by rotating the chest body part which proved to be useful:

The puppet in action:

I added the new puppet to the FPS scene redoing the animation as this new puppet was less limited in movement compared to the prototype shown in earlier posts:

Also taking reference from my 'roar' test animation I animated a new version with this puppet, adding extra camera movement and quickly making some scenery from reference of the FPS scene:

It is unsure yet if I might need a shot in between these two finished scenes as they are taking from the same angle of the big character and they don't mix very well.

Big character test animations

Originally in my animatic the big character (the chaser) raises his club preparing to attack after to dropping into the scene. However, I had a new idea where he could roar into the camera and make it shake:

Without camera:

With camera:

And here is a test of the big guy dropping into the FPS scene (with the final version of the scenery):

First 10 seconds of animation

Running scene final draft

I made new and shaded scenery for the running scene and then added the animation of the run, whilst adding the beginning part where the character drops in using the stickman reference I made earlier:

Without camera movement:

With camera movement, I changed the angles this time: 

Test animations

In the running scene the character actually must land on the floor because of the jump he does in the previous scene before he can start sprinting, which I have practiced with the stickman version:

Here I moved onto the next scene where we look through the small guy's eyes as he runs down the corridor of forest. Here is a practice some quickly drawn scenery:

I then did a test animation of the second component of the FPS scene which is the big character landing from top screen looking at the small guy:

Moving background

To give a sense of the character moving I needed to make the background move at the same speed and objects such as trees and rocks to pan across the screen. Here is a first draft at the scenery for this scene:

Here is the running animation with the background included into the shot:

Here is the animation with camera movement:

Obviously the forest seems a bit lacking in tree. So I created a new scene with a more dense background:

Here is the animation that follows (camera angles included):

Little guy running

Puppet of the small character's side:

Running without camera:

Running with camera (also made the head bob to make it more realistic):

New and improved run cycle

Because my old run was a rather poor attempt I made of my resources and went to Rhino House to find myself a better reference, where I found a much better run which looked more like a desperate sprint which is exactly what I want for my character. Looking at the frames of the Rhino House example, I drew my own stickman version of the run:

Slowed down run (3x slower):

Real speed run:

Real run with camera angles:

1st scene attempt

Here I have put the final image of the first scene and the jump puppet test to together to a make a close-to-final-render of the first part of the animation:

This render is compressed because the original file (1080p) is too large. I compressed it to what will eventually be the size for the final animation (720p).

Little guy jumping

Here I have design the final puppet for the jumping scene in the animation, using the final mask and adding in body parts including all the shading:

When I animated the puppet is wasn't all shaded but luckily for me as long as the after effects project is in the same folder as the Photoshop image I can make any alteration I want whilst the animation is in progress without causing any malfunctions to the puppet:

No shading:

Shading added:

Jump scene final design

This post is just to show the final style of all my scenery and the final drawing of the jump scene at the beginning of the animation:

Pre-highlighted:

Highlights added: