Bride of the Ugly Dinosaur

Production is well underway for The Ugly Dinosaur, and this week I've been doing rough animation for Oscar in scene #5 (the final scene). I did a whole bunch of shots based on key frames given to me by Laura Mansfield.

This is Oscar catching a glimpse of Dot's family being attacked. The first drawing is Laura's, the rest are mine. (That's the case with most of these sequences.)

Here's Oscar reacting to the attack. I think this scene turned out pretty well - he looks genuinely surprised. It's funny how exaggerated the drawings seemed while I was doing them, but when you watch the animation, it looks pretty natural. I think that's an important aspect of animation - you don't immediately think of a character like Grumpy from Snow White as being extremely cartoony and over-the-top like a Tex Avery character, but if you pay close attention, animator Bill Tytla drew some pretty extreme poses for the character. He really took full advantage of animation's strengths in translating personality without being obvious about it.

Here's Oscar going to rescue Dot's family. I added the hesitation since I thought that made Oscar a more sympathetic character.

This is Oscar running behind some rocks. 

More running.

This is Oscar peeking out from behind a rock. I always try to keep the animation funny even if the action is fairly straightforward.

This is Oscar's look of happiness as Dot runs over to him. It looks pretty sparse now, but it will play better when the animation of Dot is put in, obviously. 

A different angle on Oscar reacting to Dot. 

I can't take much credit for this one - this is Laura's drawing, I just animated the pupils moving back and forth. 

Dot and her brothers are embracing Oscar here, but he still is insecure about his jaw. Hopefully his insecurity comes through in the animation.

This is another example of a sequence that I thought was really outrageous while I was drawing it and would probably have to be downgraded, but it actually works pretty well.

Oscar is supposed to be happy here because Dot's brothers are finally accepting him. Laura did the first and last drawings here:

This is Oscar's look of jubilation, with his deformed jaw hanging open. I thought it looked too static to just have his mouth open while the rest of him stayed completely still, so I widened his eyes, too.

This last scene I'm not as crazy about. Oscar is supposed to be reacting to Dot nudging up against him, but I think it's too mechanical. I'm not sure - maybe I'll redo it at some point.