Not sure how this project got started. I wanted to experiment with objects interacting with each other and with having multiple animations happening at once. With clutter, basically. The most impressive animations I’ve ever seen have always dealt with clutter—lots of little moving parts all smashing together, like the teddy bear hallucination in Akira or the dream parade of junk in Paprika. Somehow this line of thinking led to a moose.
So much of animation happens in a void, especially when you’re doing it all on your own. A lot of amateur animation, including my own, involves one thing placed on an empty plane. The character or object I’m animating takes so much priority that the background or the actual environment it’s been placed in takes a back seat.
Having nothing but an empty void, logic tries to force itself into the situation. How does a moose end up here? Well lets have it come out of a pipe. Where does it go? Well lets have a portal of some kind. And where’s that portal going to come from? Another moose from the pile of mooses?
(I still can’t believe mooses isn’t a word. “A pile of fish” sounds good, makes sense. “A pile of moose” sounds so weird and I just can’t get behind it! Is it because it’s probably more common to see just one moose on its own instead of a whole bunch of moose together? [Now, see right there it kind of sounded alright… maybe I’m coming around to it.])
Animating a moose is hard. I’m never going to draw another one again. I’m not satisfied with a few of the movements I’ve done—especially the walk cycle. Their weird little inverted back legs throw me off. And their antlers are these big massive scoops that I’ve screwed up 50% of the time. The main moose spends half the video looking more like a deer.
That being said, I’m proud of the finished clip!
The most time consuming sequences were the shortest bits: the pile of mooses, the office workers running away. I lost my mind at times, but it’s so satisfying to watch them now. Then all of those earlier elements I wanted to experiment with accumulating in the final moose drop from the ceiling, smashing the desk. From an empty void to a full background. Multiple layers of animation interacting with each other.
