Production

Tearing my hair out now shooting my actual animation, here's an attempt that I scrapped:

More Snakes

Made the snake puppet a bit longer and added a tongue... Also tested a close-up.

Pace Tests

Some very boring (but very useful) tests I made to establish a pace for the blooming of the Lotus flowers.

I've decided to use the technique of drawing/painting on the stems and having the Lotus buds as paper puppets...

Background test

An idea I'd had for the background was to use scanned in sections of sarees that I've collected from India. This would be to give the animation a cultural flavour and context. I did this basic test to test out colours etc.

From this video I can see that the colours of the prints really interfere with the cut-outs. The only possibilities would be the purple with dots or the turquoise. However I'd also like to try out a painted background so that the cut outs stand out more...

Lotus Stem Test

Trying to figure out the technique I want to use to create the blooming Lotus buds... Few glitches here with moving parts and camera (?!) but gets the job done...

Red Rice

Return of the ominous red rice!

Not decided on whether I actually want to use this technique in my final animation (it's very clumsy and lacks detail) but I had a play today:

Snake Puppet Tests

Made some very quick tests with the snake puppets I made this weekend. Just working on how the movement of the snake works, I think I started to master it more convincingly towards the end of the first clip. After trying out the puppets I realised that the snake's slither is more complex than I first assumed and requires a little bit more thought... I researched snake movement and found a really useful video on YouTube: