Not going to lie, this was one of my favorite projects thus far into the semester. I think I finally managed a doable understanding of Harmony, and I've gotten better at using the principles of animation.
I was inspired by the iconic bus stop scene from My Neighbor Totoro, where he joyously jumps after feeling rain drops. Once he lands from his jump, a ton of rain pours down from the trees. I wanted to recreate this with a mythical giant penguin experiencing fall leaves for the first time.
Despite my ambitions, time had other plans for me. My first draft turned out alright; it was honestly better than I expected. Part of this is from the professor's suggestion of how the feet should take off and land on the ground. I awkwardly filmed myself late at night lightly jumping in the bathroom to understand which foot touches the ground first since I had trouble visualizing it.
After the critique, there was still more work to be done. For starters, there needed to be a background to give the penguin more context in relation to its size. I changed the environment to the penguin's habitat of the North Pole, which I included to aid in depicting the penguin's weight. This pole is comparatively smaller and vibrates upon the penguin's landing after the jump. Now this damn pole... big oof. I have to admit that I fell slightly asleep during the Richard William's video demonstrating vibration, and I could not find it online nor on the Box. I'm still not happy with the way the pole moves, but it gets the point across I guess.
For the penguin, I made it a little more squishy with its folds. I also hand the foot bend more when jumping and landing to show the shift of weight.
Here is the final animation.
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