Dance Cheshire, Dance!

Click and enjoy…

 Click on these too

I also did these two little animations to test how I could take what I learned from this part of the module and apply to my other work. These illustrations were done for ‘Illustration Friday’ and I decided to animated small elements of them as an experiment..

They are a little crude, but they’re a good example of ways to further my illustrations…

Cheshire Cat Zoetrope Insert

These are photos of my the finished insert of the Cheshire Cat.
I made it by drawing the separate body part of the cat [head, body and tail] then photocopying 15 times.
I then cut out the individual parts [all 45 parts…] and began sticking them on the rectangles of paper that represented one frame on the Zoetrope.
I used little bits of card to raise the pieces slightly so that shadows will occur and highlight the cut-out aspect which I adore. I held the piece up to a light so that I could see through and therefore place the parts on the next frame in the correct place.

I then stuck the individual pieces together to create one lone strip. It was alot easier to do in small segments and Ive tried to make sure that as a long strip insert, it looks clean and professional.  

Overall I really like how it came out, and havent had the chance to test it yet, but it should look great!

Using the little bits of card to raise the head and body will make it slightly 3d and look more like a paper-puppet thing, like they use in Shadow Plays.

Im very pleased. It looks much cleaner and professional than the Llama animation, and the actual illustration is more refined and appealing. 

Final cheshire cat?

After much designing and things, Ive decided to draw the Cheshire Cat doing a handstand, whilst his head spins round and his tail wobbles..

I feel this is something the cat would do and it minimizes the movement slightly by focusing it on certain small elements as apposed to the whole cat moving.
I really love how these little animations turned out, they have a great hand-made feel to it as if they are shadow puppets or something.
The style of them references the original illustrations from Alice in Wonderland, with the pen and ink lines. Im really happy with them and want to replicate this traditionally and make it into an insert for the Zoetrope in the studio.

The blue one was just to see how it may look if I had cut around edges like in my viking comic strips.. to keep the same kind of style going. I like the jagedy-ness of it.

More cheshire cats!

After doing the previous animation tests, I was inspired by some of the .GIFs I collected to make the face swirl as it it were going to disappear.
It was done simple on Photoshop and the outcome is really nice. The second one is better when the face gets smaller as it swirls but I think that this would be quite hard to replicate with traditional mediums.
(Im not sure if I have said this, but I want to make the final thing in a traditional way because I like the slight imperfections that happen.)

I also did another of the rubing out ones, but using a more stlyized way to draw the cat. I drew it more simply so I dont loose detail in the Zoetrope. It also has more of an identity.

Anyway, I still think there is too much going on and I should aim to restrict the movement.

Cheshire Cat inspirations…

Here is a collection of animated .GIFs from various versions of Alice in Wonderland each showing a different way they interpret the Cheshire Cat, particularly the way he might move or appear.

These first few are made from footage of the recent ‘Alice in Wonderland’ film by Tim Burton. They were all found via google image searches.

This one at the top is rather unsettling.. The cat’s head just floating in and smiling with his huge eyes.

I just love the way he spins and his body just materializes on the one above. This would be fantastic to replicate but would be hard maybe with 15 frames.
I also love the look on his face here as he disappears. Its so human.

Here is my favorite animated .GIF, the way the cat swirls and fades into the surroundings it wonderful. This would be fairly easy to do digitally to a drawing of a Cheshire cat face, but using a distortion filter on photoshop.
However would be very time consuming and difficult to do traditionally   

This of course is from the original Disney animation of Alice in Wonderland which at the time would have been created with traditonal mediums much like I would do, but not be used for a Zoetrope.
I like how the striped of the Cheshire cat unwind as he disappears, its a very original idea and probably one of the first times an audience have seen a moving representation of the cat.

Looking at these for reference have been good to get my ideas flowing, and given me a little inspiration for how the cat will looks aswell as how he will move or be animated. 

Cheshire’s smile animations

After making my Llama animation insert, I decided to have a little go at something else as I felt it didn’t turn out as good as I had imagined. I was watching Tin Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and was inspired to make an animation centered around the Cheshire Cat.
It seems almost obvious, trying to capture the magic and mystery of his character with animation. The way he appears and moves around will be fun to play with.
Also when viewed in the Zoetrope, I imagine it will look rather magical. The slight flickering that happens with the device will add a really nice antique effect and echo the time of the Zoetropes creation, when moving images really were magical.

These are some initial ideas, playing around with the cats face and having it disappear and reappear. The first one has his eyes stay there as the face fades and the bottom has his whole face fade.

This is a kind of standard for images of the cheshire cat, the fading face seems to be very recognizable. Looking at the actual way ive drawn the cat, I don’t like it. I’ve taken too much influence from the Tim Burton style [gothic and bit evil] and I really want to create my own version of him and make it really unique.
There is also too much dark colours and detail that would blur in the Zoetrope. 

This one shows the face fading slowly so that eventually it all disappears around his eyes. This is quite nice and works well as just lines.
I don’t think it would be as successful with colour, which dosen’t really effect much.

I did this one, trying to get a full body of the cat and do the same fading trick. [All i do is to rub out the cat and save every now and then as I go along. This would be easy to do traditional as I would trace over the previous image but draw less of it.]
I like this one alot and I prefer the cuter and plumper way I drew the cat.

I printed off this version and the one above to go in my little Zoetrope and although they were quite small and subsequently a little blurred, the animation worked well, if not a little fast.
I think that making the whole body disappear is a bit much to do in just 15 frames when put into a Zoetrope becuase the animation is way too fast.
Lest rethink what the Chesire Cat will be doing…