A little sample of some process stuff from making the short I recently wrapped up. I figured I'd do a more extensive write up, but it's difficult, as I mostly made it up as I went along. It started out as some fun with DuIK and Illustrator. I've been really trying to work on fundamentals, so as I tinkered, I started thinking about making a little .gif or two out of it. I developed layouts and color schemes, and started experimenting with texture. I wanted to communicate depth and show the back of the cave as being pretty far in the distance. Every textured graphic in the short was made by running gradients in Photoshop through as 4-color .gifs, pulling them into Illustrator and scaling them back up 250%. I used an action in Illustrator to crop them to the size of their final shape so the AE project file wouldn't be too bloated. I actually animated the entire thing fully once before, ending with the wizard marching away triumphantly. The animation (which you can see an example of in the last .gif above) was very slow, with unnatural, deliberate movements, and lacked character–unfortunate in a character animation exercise. I ended up getting some excellent feedback and went back, re-illustrating some pieces and reanimating the entire thing from start to finish. It was pretty late in the game when I realized the dead-eyed look for the dragon wasn't working, and implemented a more dynamic and expressive eye to give him a sense of life. I'd have liked to figure out a way to give him some realistic breathing and sighing animations as well... In my initial plan, I'd wanted to build something that could loop perpetually, but as it developed, I thought it would be awesome to try and take it to another level as a little short piece. I think the final piece's greatest weakness is the story element, which was an unfortunate result of working somewhat aimlessly on it over time. That being said, I'm now kicking around some ideas on the next big step, which I'll develop with a more story-oriented workflow. This began almost entirely as a technical exercise, and I learned SO much. I really couldn't be happier with the entire experience.