experimental animation

For my experimental, i started off by choosing my sound which was the ruta d sound clip as i like native music and in particular american tribes of all varieties they are very nice to stylize and easily recognisable. I decided to theme my animation around a totum pole and fireplace with a few characters. I collected a few research images to do drawings of to give me ideas for my character which are below. I then did a rough storyboard to plan out the timing of the animation with a roughly formed dope sheet. i made my characters so only the key body parts that needed to be animated where. they didnt have any colour as i decided i wanted to have a basic look to them with shadow using the light i had and drawing a slight shadow on them.

for the above character the drummer his legs are attached to the drums and cant move his top half of his body can move slightly and the head has full rotation and the arms can move up and down in the motion of tapping allowing the character to play the drums with out his arms wandering while im animating him.

for the above character the piper, his top half of his body ive allowed for rocking back and forth movement to the music, the lower half of his body is all one connected to the log he is sitting on as i felt it wasnt necessary to have any of the bottom half of him animated. his arms are in 2 parts allowing for retraction and extention of the arms holding the flute out to the totum pole and bring back to his lips to play and the head moves with the top part of the body as he has long hair which i didnt want to seperate from the body.
For the hand parts i literally drew round mine and placed them in a position so that i could pull the leaves back like it was my hands doing it with the thumb between the leave as they go back maybe.These are some of the parts for the totum pole pre cutting out and rigging.

To rig my characters i took dereks advice and used cotton string and masking tape to hold the moveable parts to each other and the non moveable parts. I did this for all 3 of my characters the 2 indian men and the totum pole but the hands and the leaves i moved independantly. Below is a few images of the way i made the rig for the totum pole which is the same way as for the other two characters.