Ok apart from living in my pj's for a month I have a couple of finished scenes. A follow up to the junk yard scenes and an avi which shows what the final aesthetic with animation will look like.
Iam trying to keep the camera pans very simple and focus mainly on character animation. The most important thing is that every action should be what the characters represent. For me that is the basis of the story. I have used the aid of rotoscoping so that the apes look believable. Its amazing how much you can learn about timing by studying real footage frame by frame, it has given me a better understanding of the countless poses apes have.The challenge here is; How do you give your drawings character. All apes move in a similar way when walking, running, jumping, eating etc. They all share similar characteristics like being playful, cheeky, fast reactions, low concentration span. So for rotoscoping its great because I only need a couple of examples to get an idea of how apes move in general. But since these are animated characters all though they move in the same way each pose must represent the individuality of that ape. How do I go about that: One thing I have learnt from my dissertation which was looking at the development of comic personalities is that personality is achieved through reaction. Two characters will be placed within the same situation but it is how each one reacts which shows what type of character they represent. So my aim is to be able to achieve just that. For the story to be interesting their characters must develop or change throughout the 3 mins. Hopefully this will be clear to audiences. Also the change must be influenced by the apes becoming friends. One ape should influence the other and vice versa. My approuch is to show how the apes react individually to getting food from a tourist and how they react once acquainted.

This is the rough animation for a scene where one of the apes walks along a rail.




Rough animation for ape running away from a tourist



...Animatic (Not fully finished though) Iam still tweaking some bits to
bring out a bit more personality into my characters, and some of my
ideas keep changing but time is a factor. The soundtrack is complete
which is useful to use when animating. I have extracted my sounds
from internet mostly from vids on Youtube. Tourist that have
visited Gib and filmed the apes. They capture real reactions and voices that gives a real feel to the animation. The films capture background noises which can usually be heard from up the rock.