I made this animated teaser for a fictional book launch as part of the Portfolio Boost Challenge at Inkygoodness Collective. We had a few weeks to identify something missing in our portfolio, and make something new to bridge that gap.
I want to make more (longer) sciencey explainer video content, and I also want to expand toward illustrated non-fiction children’s books. I also know animals are an evergreen topic in the children’s market. So with all that, I thought I’d make a book-related animation for a science or animal topic.
Inspirations
I was inspired by beautiful work from Flying Eye Books like “Everest” by Sangma Francis and Lisk Feng. I also dug up this childhood favourite of mine by Rosanna Hansen and Pamela Baldwin Ford (published by Grosset & Dunlap).
Explorations and concepts
I imagined a new book about wolves, and rather than have a static cover reveal photo, let’s bring it to life with animation. I started by doing some sketches and style explorations.
After those experiments, I began working on a composition of a wolf walking into frame, looking at us, then walking out to make way for the title reveal. My first concept took place at night, and after some suggestions from others in the course, I decided to try a daytime, snowy scene as well.
Final style frame
Ultimately, I combined elements from both concepts into a single style frame, which would define the final style and composition I would use in the animation, which would be created and animated in Moho.
Animation prep
I wanted to animate everything using 2D vectors in Moho, so I needed to create vector versions of my characters and location there, taking advantage of the program’s textured vector brushes. Once that was done, it was time to rig the character and do some animation tests to see if the rig could handle what I needed it to do.
Delivery
With all the tests done, I then got to work on completing the full animation.
Finally, I made a few mockups, including this one of the animation as a “reel” for social media.
I was delighted to tie for a prize in the course: Biggest Creative Leap.
