Iliyan Danev

Time constraints in future projects might affect quality if not managed more effectively. 

This is the only background I coloured. I didn’t use it in the animation because it would have looked inconsistent alongside the uncoloured backgrounds. The colours are kept simple rather than detailed, but they work well with the character. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to colour all the backgrounds for the entire animation.

I used Adobe Premiere Pro to connect the animation from the three separate tracks created in Procreate Dreams. I had to split the animation into sections during production to prevent crashes caused by the overall length of the project. Working this way was more secure, as it allowed me to animate in manageable parts. Once the sections were complete, I connected them together in Premiere Pro. The only step left after merging the animation is to add the sound.

This is the rough animation of Track 3, which contains the 40 second hold. I was able to fully utilize that time until it reached the 40 second mark. This track didn’t take more than two weeks to animate because the action is limited most of the movement comes from Ron, rather than from both Ron and Don. That reduced the workload compared to animating both characters in every scene. Finishing this last 40 seconds at the right time allowed me to shift focus to the rest of the animation, particularly adding sound.

The final background is the shot where Don appears twice: first showing partially out of the hole to see Ron, and then fully emerging. Sketching this background was not difficult, since it only required simple elements the hole and the grass. Because the grass is taller than Don, it helps show his true size in comparison to the environment around him.

For this scene, I had to sketch a new background to create a closer perspective of the original one. The challenge was making sure that when Ron falls, the environment around and behind him still matches the previous background. I needed to avoid introducing details that would look inconsistent. Since Ron falls near the hole on its left side where the trees are that means the trees must be visible in this shot. I also added more grass to the ground, since Ron lies down there after the fall.

This is the background for the hole where Don appears. I tried to make it look like a hole surrounded by small rocks and dirt, though it will look more effective once colored. Since I don’t have time for coloring and I can’t color just one track while leaving the others in black and white I focused on adding small details to suggest that the hole is made of dirt and rocks.

You can see where the hole is placed for Don’s appearance. The background itself stays the same; only the hole is added. The hole is kept on a separate track, with the characters, the hole, and the background all separated. This approach has the advantage of allowing environmental changes without affecting or damaging the other sketches.

This is the true size of the background, which will save time for a particular scene where the background doesn’t end. What I’ve done is sketch the background so that when the scene shifts into a closer perspective, I can simply zoom in on it. However, I need to make sure that the background quality remains consistent it shouldn’t downgrade from good quality to blurred or smudged quality after being zoomed in.

The background continues from Track 2 into the next track because it’s the same scene and location. However, the background is extended and made wider in the next track, since the scene shifts when Ron drags the hole. This way, the movement shows not only the change in the hole’s position but also the background itself moving along with it.

This is the ending scene, where Ron is lying down, looking defeated after being bitten by the snake. Don appears and sees Ron in this state, raising his hand to make a peace sign as a gesture of surrender. I chose the peace sign instead of something more traditional, like a white flag, because it’s simple and straightforward. Classic cartoons often use the white flag to indicate giving up, so I wanted to do something different to show surrender in a way that feels fresh and distinct from those older conventions.

After we see which hole is the real one where Don is hiding, we have the shot where Don appears, wondering what happened with Ron. In this scene, the background remains on a separate track so I can erase Don’s frames if needed without affecting it. The shot itself isn’t complicated it’s simply Don appearing calmly, without any rush. To slow down the action and give it more weight, I duplicated the frames twice, which stretched out the movement at the right pace.

This shot was straightforward and easy to handle. After the action where the snake moves and then bites Ron leaving him with a shocked expression I used a simple approach. The shot itself is just a drawing, which I moved using a tool that automatically animates the motion (similar to what After Effects does). The purpose of this shot is to reveal that after Ron gets bitten, we finally see the real hole where Don is. This shows that Ron had mistakenly been digging in the wrong hole the whole time.

For animating the snake, I worked on a separate track so that when erasing frames it wouldn’t affect Ron’s hand. This allowed me to focus solely on the snake’s movement and make adjustments more easily. I kept the design simple, just a basic sketch, but one thing I overlooked was giving the snake continuous motion before it strikes Ron. In reality, snakes don’t stop moving especially if they’re being grabbed so the pauses in my animation slightly weakened the scene. Instead of flowing naturally, the snake moves a few times, stops, and then bites Ron. With more time, I could have refined the snake’s movements to feel more realistic and fluid.

This scene was quick and easy to animate. After the character turns slightly toward the screen, I animated the arms for about six frames. Then I copied those frames, reversed them, and looped them to create a repeated shaking movement. By grouping and duplicating the frames, I was able to extend the motion seamlessly until the next scene began.

Because the hole was placed farther away, and to save time, I decided to animate his hand stretching in a flexible way to reach the hole and pull it closer to him. Since this is a cartoon, there’s room for exaggeration so there’s no strict “right or wrong” for this shot. Without this solution, the alternative would have been animating Ron walking back toward the hole and then squatting down again, but with time running out I needed a quicker approach that still flowed naturally into the next scenes.