My initial idea going into this project was to do something inspired by the anime mob psycho, but I soon realized that I wanted to challenge myself by expressing something more original. The design of the main character, mob, was inspiration for the strawberry, which initially had a closer resemblance but later only shared a few characteristics. For awhile, I was unsure of what I wanted to animate in the lower portion of each section, and flipflopped from having a watering can pour water on the bush to having a flower grow and then wilt. I eventually settled on a mixture of the two, water dripping off the strawberry onto the wilting plant, which then sprouts to life and wilts again starting the cycle anew. I knew that I wanted a lively/vibrant color palette, which I believe I was able to achieve with the bold yellows green and red which take up the majority of the viewers attention.
The concept of a head rotation was within my original premise, and although I feared I didn't have the proper experience to animate it well enough, I believe it came out relatively consistent. Overall I think I'm pretty happy with the finished product, however in hindsight I think I would have added more detail to the flower or exaggerated it's wilting to more easily convey what exactly is happening. This was quite a challenging piece to complete, as rather than working with multiple frames which could easily be traced over we only had our main wheel and a scrap one to animate with. Having to work with both the light board for the first time and only two “frames” was admittedly out of my comfort zone.
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