The Command Zone - Bloomburrow
The Game Knight's Podcast, hosted by Jimmy Wong and Josh Lee Kwai, was in need of some character concepts and animations for their Bloomburrow episode. The project was to turn four characters into woodland creatures that would fit into the Bloomburrow world. Jimmy was to be a mouse. Josh was to be a rabbit. Olivia was to be a squirrel. And DrLupo was to be a frog. They needed running animations and battle prep animations.
Next design was Josh the Rabbit. The reference provided to me was from the Byrke, Long Ear of the Law card.
I started with Jimmy's mouse design using Mable, Heir to Cragflame as a strong influence. Ultimately, we went with the third design and I had to start cracking on some animation.
I only sent in two designs, but they were really happy with the second design. Visually, it's very pleasing, but I knew the more pieces to his outfit were going to be more challenging to animate.
DrLupo came next as the frog. I was very excited about the frog designs since they were a little different. The reference that was given ws Helga, Skittish Seer from the Bloomwood series. They liked the head and color scheme from the 2nd design, but the body and clothing from the 3rd design. So, we mashed them up to make DrLupo Frog.
Luckily Command Zone had an editor to add some cool special effects and Olivia came out as a fantastic magic wielding squirrel.
And finally, Olivia as the Squirrel. When drawing a squirrel, it's a ton of fun, but animating a squirrel is a different story. Their tails move so independently than their bodies, it created a bit of a challenge.
Battle Stance Animations
The biggest note here was that the battle stances needed to be from 3 to 5 frames, which is a lot of movement that need to happen in such a short amount of frames.
Final Animation
Along with their editor, my characters were used for the opening sequence of their episode.