Shot 2 - Intro to the cat and the rat

There was not a lot of direction as to what I should do to introduce the cat and the rat. In my own storyboards that I had started, I had a cheesy "popping up" action when they were introduced. Below is the storyboard panel I drew for this shot. I was not told to do any other action for this shot so I thought I would try it.

The first issue I had was perspective. The rat is much smaller than the cat so to get it to look like the storyboard, The rat would have to be very close to the camera and the cat further away. When I tried this and positioned them, it didn't look right. The rat's head became almost as large as the cat's and it was hard to get them both in shot without getting other body parts in there too. The other body parts would not have been such a problem but there were some issues with the rigs so I was trying to hide most of the body but it just didn't work.

For the background, I used another still image of a small area of the environment so when this was out behind the two characters, the proportion and perspective did not match up.

To resolve these issues, I decided to introduce them another way. I put the rat on top of the cat's head so that the cat would pop up first and then the rat would appear from behind the cat's head slightly later. This looked like quite a friendly gesture when they were positioned this way too which added to the point that they were friends.

I did some tests to get the timing right for the shot.



The popping up action was still little slow but I didn't want to make it too fast. In the end, I got the shot timing almost perfect and then any adjustments that I needed to make, I used time remapping in After Effects.

I put all the elements together and then rendered them.



I don't think this is the best way to introduce the characters but it was only supposed to be a test until the decision was made on how the characters would be introduced. In the end, this shot was the only shot created to introduce the characters. It needs a bit more work doing to it before it can be put into the final film, for example the rat needs to face the camera so the audience can see his face rather than just his nose. The music and narration needs to be added too.