PL&TN: day 8

Since beginning to write this more frequently I realise I'm getting a lot more work done than I might naturally do on my own, because I feel like I have to report what I've achieved every day, and I feel like it must be enough of a day's work, so I'm really concentrating hard . . . here is what I have done today.  I'm working on some of the incidental parts of the film - animals that wander in and out, the wallpaper in the cafe, that kind of thing . . . if I get stuck with some of the bigger ideas it helps to keep things going to just move over to some of the other smaller details.  So here is a test of some ducks that fly past early in the film -

it's easier to work out movements as an animated pencil test, just to see if they work properly, because a lot of the animation is done with replacement pieces when I make them as shadow puppets, it's quicker to re-draw them than to re-cut them.  This duck is made up of about 6 different images, so I will eventually cut out 6 different pieces to loop and make them fly across the screen.  

I also designed the wallpaper that will appear in the tea-room scenes . . . maybe Designer's Guild will stock it next season . . . 

here is it before I added the tadpoles and gymnosperms (because they just seemed like the obvious thing to add in the gaps):

here are some of the fern research sketches:

and here is the main character's house:

there isn't that much left to design now, probably one more main thing,  so I guess it means I have to start the final animating soon . . . it's scary to commit to a finished picture.