Flamingo Flight Cycle

So, after attempting to do a four legged walk cycle and completely failing at it, I still didn't want to give up the idea of animating an animal for my demo reel. One of my teachers suggested that I try my hand at animating a bird.

I picked a flamingo because they look so interesting. Plus I thought it would be fun to explore different ways to color it.

I tried using a bitmap fills or actual feathers that I turned pink on Photoshop, but it didn't look quite right. I was about to just give up and just use flat color when I was inspired to do something different after I finally saw "Sita Sings the Blues".

The movie was made using flash, and I really liked how Nina Paley made all the characters and environments look so interesting. She used flat colors for somethings, but they always had some sort of interesting detail.

After even more trail and error I finally found something that worked pretty well for my puppet.



I made the body, legs, and head puppet parts and animated the wings and neck myself.

I'll post the actual scene on my vimeo later.