New School Year, New Project: My Own Sorcerer's Apprentice

To Boldly Try What I Haven't Tried Before

Why this project and idea?

One of my favorite animations growing up was the Sorcerer's Apprentice section from Fantasia, as I loved the thought of mischievous Mickey Mouse messing with magic, only for him to lose control of it to get his just desserts. It began my love, I believe, of mythos and magic that continues now.
But also, I wanted to make a more story-driven project compared to last year due to the comments and concerns given to me last year from my project entered into eMagine. Also, I wanted to try to animate a human character alongside a creature this time, taking more time to make them look decent and realistic.
The main reason, however, is to show that I could accomplish this project in it's entirety, and not procrastinate and make something that could be both cute and cool.

The Scope:

Beni

I plan to have three characters; Beni the Apprentice, Keiter the Senior Wizard, and Austie the creature companion of Beni. Beni is an apprentice wizard who is powerful, but very untrained in magic. Keiter has to leave to gather more supplies to a potion, and cautions his charges to not practice anything while he's gone and leaves. But Beni decides to entertain himself by flying a small dragon toy around the room, which hits a glass jar containing a fairy. It escapes and now Austie and Beni now have catch it before their master gets home.

I do have walk cycles completed for both Beni and Austie, as well as a run cycle for Austie that I will display here. I am currently working on the backgrounds and sets as well as the other scenes. The links to the tests are Austie(run), Austie(walk), and Beni.

Austie

Conclusion 

So far, where I'm at for this project, I'm confident in my abilities to make this coherent story as best as I can make it. It's both exciting and exhilarating to attempt a project at this scale, and I am hopeful to pull off my best animation so far within the program! So for now, I will continue to create new animations to try to wrap the story together.