Mountain Lion Animation Tests

A first look at "A Mountain Lion's Journey"

I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with what my animated short “A Mountain Lion’s Journey” might look like. I’ve landed/decided on a few things: it’ll be digital 2D puppet-based animation and it’ll incorporate colorful digitally painted backgrounds.

Puppet-based Animation

After doing 2D rotoscoped animation for my last short animation, “Love of the Land”, I knew I wanted to do something different. I had been experimenting with going the traditional hand-drawn animation route, however, I ultimately landed on digital 2D puppet-based animation. This way I can create the mountain lion character with virtual bones and move/animate it that way.

My tool of choice for this approach is ToonSquid on my iPad Pro.

Digitally Painted Backgrounds

For “A Mountain Lion’s Journey” I also wanted to have colorful digitally painted backgrounds. I connected with friend and fellow creative-type Dylan Duncan to create a few test backgrounds for the project. His digital painting are beautiful and really capture the Vermont forests.

Animation Tests

The first animation test is of the mountain lion walking in the winter woods.

The second animation test is of the mountain lion stretching in the forest.

What’s Next

Next steps include:

• Getting the front view of the mountain lion set-up with virtual bones.

• Testing out some facial animation.

• Finish storyboarding.