Animation tests- fox facial expressions

So finally I have had enough time to sit down and dedicate a couple of days to creating some facial expressions for my character of the Fox. I have been working on them for a while now, but it has become very apparent that I need to actually do some animation tests as that is the only way really to see if the expressions I've created have been successful. Here are three tests that i rendered out to test the artwork (created in Photoshop). The animation tests were done in AfterEffects, due to the fact that I'm using bitmap not vector images, and Flash (last time i checked) has never been able to handle it without crashing. I think the last test is most successful, as it conveys emotion quite well, it could be better and I will continue the experimentation process until I'm absolutely happy with the result, but for now here are the first tests , (it's been so exciting seeing months of work on the character now starting to come alive, my favorite part!) 

Looking at form through tone- life drawing

Today's life drawing session was interesting, as I completely immersed myself in looking at tonal values in the surroundings of the figure, almost forgetting that I'm looking at human form and considering the scene as a whole, trying to avoid the "tunnel vision" that I normally get when drawing a figure. This exercise has been about relating everything in the drawing to the surrounding area, working the whole drawing rather than focusing on details and I think it really shows through in my drawing this week. Firstly this is the first drawing that has been worked all over the paper, rather than leaving some bits unfinished, (like feet in most of my previous work), secondly because the figure is rather large and I was focusing on the tones, I have completely neglected to look at proportions, instead focusing my energy on getting an overall feeling of the scene. I am please with the result, despite the fact that it's not normally what I would consider a good depiction of the actual model. But it's okay because what I did instead was to gain a new perspective and try a different approach.

Tonal Study- Life Drawing

Today we did a two hour tonal study drawing, which i enjoyed so much i can't even describe it. 

The key to our drawing task was to cover the whole page in graphite hatching, to create a general mid-tone  then use a rubber to rub out the lightest areas of the scene, followed by more graphite hatching to darken the shadows. We were suppose to look for differences in tone and work the whole drawing at the same time, contours weren't allowed, so I didn't even do a faint pencil outline, before starting to draw. I enjoy painting, and this exercise felt a lot like oil painting to me, because nothing was fixed, you could change and shift your marks over and over again, by rubbing out or darkening certain areas. The challenge was to work gradually, and resist the temptation to get sucked in working on certain details, because every single tonal value in the drawing had to relate to the whole composition, and not just to the adjacent area. Here is my drawing from this exercise. 

 

ChickenFox- Animatic v4

Here's the almost almost final animatic for ChickenFox: