Rationale and Final Animation

My animation is about a breed of dog which is often viewed as scary and intimidating. My character is a Doberman. I wanted to communicate that once a dog is in the care of the SPCA and is able to play and be with the public that it is guaranteed a safe family pet. 

The scene starts with close ups of my characters nose, eyes and then zooms out to reveal his whole face. I used these close ups to create the feeling that the character could potentially be intimidating. Then the dog is seen jumping for the a pink ball, watches it bounce, headbutts it into the air, stops the ball and then looks at the audience and winks while the tagline comes up. This juxtaposes against the previous shots and tells the audience that this dog is just playful.

The music builds up from the start and becomes more exciting as soon as the dog starts jumping. This music suited the close up shots of the dogs face and also the slow motion action scene afterwards. The line "I am a good boy." is also well suited to the idea behind this animation.

I chose the blue background because the SPCA logo has blue in it. I didn't want the scene to be depressing looking so I chose a more brighter blue to suit this. 

I had to change the storyboard a couple of times because of my characters rig system. He was able to move his legs to run but its rig wasn't hugely suitable to jump with his legs going right back or right forward. However, I feel this final animation still portrayed my idea successfully. 

The tagline "You don't have to adopt us to help us." ties in with my own idea of not judging a dog based on its breed. Because it is being taken care of by the SPCA and it open to the public, it is a family friendly dog and you don't have to adopt him to help him. Just playing and having contact with the animals available at the SPCA helps them feel comfortable with people and become more social. 

Final Animation:

Original Renders

First render previews, testing music. I decided to stick to the second videos music.


What to fix: 

• Some of the camera framing is off
• The timing. Some of it is meant to be slow motion and some not. I need to tweak this a bit
• The timing of the head is awkward when the ball bounces near the end
• He is too still at the end -I'm thinking of adding a wink in there

Camera Testing and Render Previews

Looks like hes about to be hit in the face with the ball...

Woooooooo, rendering time! Just one more scene to render!

Playblast

So my rig wasn't really set up to do some of what I wanted so I did a test animation to see what I can do with it.
This is a small playblast of when he jumps for the ball and headbutts it into the air. -There is not ball yet so ignore that. This took ages to upload onto YouTube so I've already made some drastic changes to this.

Planning the Animation

Some reference sketches of key points in my animation. This helps me while animating. 

Jumping for the ball and landing

Pouncing around the ball, nudging the ball into the air

Watching the ball bounce, stops the ball with his paw, turns to the audience while the message is displayed

Playblast

My first Playblast. Blend shapes in action. First 10 seconds of my animation complete... The quality is incredibly bad but I just wanted to put a rough copy on here.

Blend Shapes

Nose, Ears, Eyes Blendshapes:

Ears:

Nostrils:
Flaring nostrils

Eyes:
It looks like he's been punched in both eyes but when the texture is on, it looks fine...

Weight Painting