Buttercup
Buttercup is a character animation exercise I made during third year of college. He is a bat who tries to be scary and frightening, but secretly he is a sweetheart.
Pre-production
Buttercups design is based on a taxidermy bat I own. This bat is half skeleton, half skin. I envisioned him as a character that looks scary and also tries to portray this image. He is still a young bat learning the craft and despite his best efforts people can't stop adoring him.
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B A C K G R O U N D
For the background I went with a spooky dark forest. The shining moonlight and flowers gives it a charm ideal for our Buttercup.
C O L O R S T U D I E S
Next I experimented with the colors. I ended up choosing the brown color for his skin because this lies the closest to his actual color. For the teeth I opted for a dark yellow to give him a scarier aspect. I also put him on top of the background to test if there is enough contrast so he's clearly visible.
C H A R A C T E R S H E E T S
Production
For this animation I wanted to focus on flow and flexibility. That is why I decided to attack it differently than usual.
Step one was recording the audio and from that point on I narrowed my character down to a base shape: a bean with a ball on top.
I animated straight ahead using TVPaint. Once the sketch was done I went in and added details slowly bringing my character to life.
R O U G H
L I N E A R T
Post-production
B A C K G R O U N D
I used Davinci Resolve to make the clouds in the background move. I did this by creating 3D image planes, adding a camera and animating the cloud layer.
A N I M A T I O N
lighting:
particles:
