Started a new animation

Princess Animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Well it was fun to post something in color, but now it's back to the good ol' graphite on paper. This is part of a new animation I started at my internship at July Films. There will be 3 characters in the scene. The context of the scene is they'll be seeing something that they've all been waiting for and become excited by the reveal. This is Princess with popsicle in hand. This is just the first pass and I was pretty happy with how it turned out, so I'll be starting to refine it and making adjustments to it as I work out the two boys in the scene to make sure they all work well together.
One of the things Mike saw in my animation was as I phrase out my animation I usually work from one idea then another and then another. I don't transition from one to the other smoothly, it's too sudden. So when I go over it again I'll be working on that, getting her excitement to build up a bit in the walk before the hopping. Something that seems simple and obvious but somehow eludes me still. Also the skirt reacts too much to the hop, it needs to be scaled back a bit and she should maintain a little more control over her popsicle hand. I'm also trying to figure out a way to make her move a bit more feminine to differentiate her movement from the boys.


Here are my thumbnails for the whole scene. The two who are hopping move right to left, and the other left to right.