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:

Small guys mask final and more puppet practice

I perfected the small guy's mask same as I did with the big guy. I made the colours more friendly on this one as he is the 'chased' one and is the good guy:

I also did a puppet test of moving the arms with the big guy. I only made a rough shape of half the body. The fragments consist of a head, body, 2 shoulders, 2 arms made up of a upper and lower part: