Scene 8 - Sneaking

Ursus' fantastic idea was to disguise himself as a picnic basket. I have had many people mention Yogi bear to me at this stage, but I fail to see why any one animator should have a monopoly on a type of animal or it's characteristics. I like to point out that my bear can show just as much emotion as Yogi Bear without the need for him to speak.

In this scene, Ursus sneaks into the camp sight in a comical cartoon way. As he walks into the camp on his tip toes, I will likely add a classic cartoon sound effect over the top of enhance the funniness of the scene.

Once Ursus has snuck his was onto the scene he appears next to the honey, and pulls an extremely happy face. As mentioned before, I find it quite surprising how easily you can tell he has this metaphoric smile, even with the absence of a mouth.

To create the sneaking animation, I again started with a run cycle, and then heavily edited it so that I could jump cut Ursus to behind the table. I positioned the camera in such a way that you could see Ursus sneaking from tree to tree, making it more comical and suitable for our target audience.

Scene 7 - Thinking

In this scene, I use arm and hand gestures again to portray the emotion and thoughts of my bear. Ursus is standing in front of the sign trying to think of a way to overcome his problem. After standing around scratching his chin for a moment, he suddenly gets a brainwave.

I find it amazing that with such simple movements, being the pointed finger and slight raising of eyebrows, you can portray so much about how the bear is feeling. I think that it really shows how important hand gestures can be when showing emotion and feeling.

I will likely have a comical ding sound when he actually gets his idea, although it remains to be seen whether or not this will actually be needed.

Scene 6 - Shoot To Kill Sign

In this scene, Ursus skips towards the honey happily past a strange looking sign but thinks nothing of it, when suddenly he has to do a double take. He reappears staring at the sign in a comical manner, and then pulls a sad face when he realises what the sign says. To animate this scene, I used a heavily edited run scene to produce a comical skip. This was achieved by auto keying certain frames within the walk cycle.

Once this was done, I converted the whole walk sequence into key frames so that I could edit it easier into the double take. This comical effect was achieved by having 2 keyframes next to each other, creating a teleport effect. With the correct sound effect, I feel that this could be very funny in the actual animation.

The camera in this scene pans around to fixate on the sign as Ursus walks past it, it then jump cuts to a close up of Ursus' face to show him being sad. Again, the jump cut was produced by having 2 key frames next to each other.

Scene 5 - Rub Tummy

In this scene, Ursus puts his BEARnoculars away and rubs his tummy in glee. He smacks his "lips" (He moves his snout in such a way that would suggest this is what he is doing with the aid of a sound effect) and rubs his belly in delight. He also wiggles his ears forwards and backwards to show he is happy. To animate the putting away of the BEARnoculars, I quite cleverly started with the key frames I made previously of him getting them out, and reversed them on the timeline. Once I had done this I key framed the bipeds hand to move around on his stomach, and also added some key frames for the morpher modifier.

The camera in this scene was placed to give a good angle on the belly rub, but also to hide the mysterious bear pockets from view of the audience.

Scene 4 - First Person Honey Spot

In this scene, we see through Ursus' eyes, looking for the honey in the distance. When I come to edit this animation together in Premier Pro, I will add a binocular overlay to aid in the visualisation. I made this scene by simply playing a camera where Ursus previously stood, and animating the camera target via auto key. Once Ursus has his eyes fixed on the honey, I move the camera in to give the effect that he has zoomed in on it.

I am a little concerned about the length of this scene, and will probably edit it down in post production.

Scene 3 - Spotting Honey

In this simple yet effective scene, I have Ursus looking around in the BEARnoculars. Because I also made an accompanying first person part to this scene, I made the movement very simply by rotating the bip of the biped whilst in auto key, but the camera angle and close up shot making for a very comical and effective movement.

Once the movement was done, I used the morpher to add another sniff to the scene. I am pleasantly surprised how well this scene turned out when looking at how simple it was to produce.

Scene 2 - Finding BEARnoculars

In this scene, Ursus reaches into his bear pockets and pulls out his trusty BEARnoculars. He then puts them up to his eyes and begins looking into the distance. I attached the BEARnoculars to the bipeds hand using the link tool, not knowing that I could have used the link constraint, making the job a lot easier, as I had to render this scene in 2 parts, making the BEARnoculars invisible in the initial frames.

As I progressed through the module it came to my attention I could use the Link Constraint tool, which I used in later scenes. The movement of Ursus was once again key framed on the time line. I used a slightly different camera and omni light to have it a little different from the other scene.