Good Kangaroo Hunting

In the midst of an Australian Outback, a hungry Dingo hides in wait for an unsuspecting Kangaroo to fall into his trap...

This was the first character story I've attempted this year, about a dingo hunting a kangaroo, but failing as the kangaroo speeds away. Using a combination of Photoshop and After Effects, the animation was done and done well. After drawing my two characters, the dingo and the kangaroo, I then extracted them from the paper using Photoshop and colored them accordingly. I then decorated backgrounds of the Australian Outback with a soft brush for the land and a dotted brush to create the sandy texture. I then used a grass texture to make tall and dusty blades of grass to put into the background. Transferring them all into After Effects, I then began animating each limb separately, altering the positions of the keynotes when they are needed. Then, I put in the backgrounds and placed the finished animations into each proper scene. I then created another composition in After Effects and put in the finished scenes in the correct order. Once I finished adjusting the length of the scenes, I rendered it out as an mp4.

Over the course of this story animation, I learned that how watching your inspiration of your characters can help make them better animated, and how to make a running four legged animal. I also learned about the importance of time management, as I had scenes being worked on longer than I had previously expected.
Yet even as I'm proud of my work, I still see areas that I need to improve on or change. The first would be on how to make the characters move more naturally, and maybe how to make the dingo run better. What I would change is the story, as I wish to do different animals next time. However, I do like the backgrounds I created and the characters conceived to live within them.
The experience of working four-legged animals however, is what I'll take from this project, along with the knowledge of how to make different shots of the same animation.

This was one of my favorite projects to create and to make, as I fell in love with the characters and story I made. I'm proud of my work so far and what is yet to come has me even more excited, as I know I'm improving.