JibJab Ecard

Brief: Creating a shareable Ecard that celebrates

a certain Holiday and makes people laugh.

The Holiday I chose was Halloween.

Target Audience: Teens and young adults

THIS ANIMATION IS CALLED PUMPKIN BUSTERS

Storyboard and Style Frames

The original idea for this animation, while it had the potential to show off animation principles and a fun Werewolf character, it lacked a strong sense of humor and relied too heavily on text.

Moving forward, I made the Werewolf's goal to be to get the Pumpkin on the table from the floor and make him live to regret it.

To do that, I needed to make the composition wider for more dramatic movement and remove as much distractions in the background as possible.

I knew I could have a funnier ending to the animation, though, so I added a bit of a twist ending to surprise the viewer in an amusing yet unexpected way.

Rigging the Werewolf

The werewolf was fully illustrated and rigged by me. He was originally used for a previous project, but I wanted to bring him back again to have a bit more fun with him and his features.

Duik Bassel, an extension for After Effects, was used to rig and animate the Werewolf.

Multiple mouth expressions (smirk, frown, frustrated, etc), eye variations (half closed, wide open, winking, etc), retractable claws and an animatable tail are some of the features set up in the rig.

First Pass/Blocking

Second Pass

Final Product

Pumpkin Busters

While trying to get a pumpkin on his table, this Werewolf may bust a few other pumpkins of his own.

Animated in After Effects and using Duik Bassel for Rigging