Children. They're All Little Bastards Really.

Not a big entry this time, but I wanted to show a couple line test/end result comparisons from a scene that actually features very little by way of animation. This is the sequence in which the Creepy Kid has brought the Duck home and is in the process of stitching it back together. One of the shots has already been discussed in a previous post with those that remain featuring far less extreme animation.

The first appearance of the Kid in the scene is simply his rising into view.

When offscreen, sound effects will imply his rustling about. To punctuate his emerging from beneath the table we see and hear lightning from outside (fairly crucial to establish its presence as later in the scene it strikes the dead Duck through an open window).

The tricky thing with this shot was getting the secondary motion of his head settling into place right. With the accompanying flashes of lightning I feel it's more or less there.
Here's another shot featuring the same backdrop and composition. All that really occurs is the Kid, having been called to dinner, contemplating the Duck before he decides to leave any further taxidermy until later.

This is done entirely through facial expression, one of my favourite things to animate as I have documented previously.
Here's how it looks with the backdrop (and to show the compositional arrangement with the Duck silhouette).

One more to end on, and my favourite of the three. In this shot the Kid, having supped, returns to his room to find that the reanimated in absentia Duck has buggered off.

This makes for a nice reaction take, and some facial expressions I'm really happy with that convey the Kid's subsequent fear and bewilderment.

With some post-effects (and eventually a soundtrack) the overall shot nicely caps off the scene.

The character of the Creepy Kid is probably the least explored of the ensemble. He has no dialogue and little screen-time, but the audience should hopefully pick up bits and pieces from the glimpses of his behaviour and the environment in which he dwells. My intention was for the viewer to know enough about the character to know they don't want to know any more. Y'know?
Actually, I don't know. I'm starting to smell the potential for a Creepy Kid spinoff. Yep, tons of mileage there...