Alisha L Animation (LAU): Applied Animation: Documentary - Fenrir Scene and Additional Scene with Hel

Applied Animation

Fenrir Scene and Additional Scene with Hel

I took the work for a close-up scene of Fenrir, from Joseph and reused the spirits from the Hel scene I worked on last week, for an additional scene, as she walks towards the gates.

I needed to do some research for the close-up shot of Fenrirs' paw and the chains, as I needed to understand more anatomical parts of the paw and how he could go about flexing his toes - as dogs are unable to actually "unsheathe" their claws. I found this diagram to help me explain this:

I realised this would be difficult to do with just puppet animation, as we had planned, so I decided to use a mix of both puppet and frame-by-frame animation, to illustrate Fenrir lifting his paw and flexing his toes. The added dust shift under his paw is an additional small detail, similar to the breath steam and added snow. These small details really make the character feel apart of the world and interacting with the environment.

Secondly, I also re-used the Spirit assets for another scene with Hel, to save both time and keep the shots consistent. All I needed to do was re-key the animation and puppet movement and time it to Hel walking to the gates, which is animated by Joseph.

The new scene with Hel and the reused spirit animation could be further improved, with glow effects, making the spirits more opaque and additional VFX in post-editing. Joseph will be working on the post-production for Hels' scenes, so he will be the one to make those changes.
I noticed some shakiness with the shadows on Fenrirs' leg, which I hadn't noticed before. This is just a small error on my part, when I was animating the shadows. Next time, Ill make sure to use the pencil line method, before filling in the shadows on each frame. The shot could also be further improved in post, with added snow-fall and some colour adjustments, to fit better with the narration.

Alisha L Animation (LAU)