Threatening Cat (Patreon)

Hello! More progress on that RAT thing! I posted that little loop 2 weeks ago and I was excited to have some follow up rat material for you last week, so I did some style tests where I tried to convert every frame into a 3D object, just to determine if it was possible for a whole project. I tried a few different techniques and all of them hit roadblocks or just looked kinda bad- and before I arrived at anything worth sharing on here, I got SICK!!!

Now I'm on the mend though, and in that time the film idea for the rats has started to take shape- and so now that I have a bit more direction, rather than doing technical experiments I thought I'd jump in and start animating more ACTUAL stuff for the project!

So to begin, here's some cat hands that I'm working on! It's not my first time animating a cat making threatening gestures, but I think this IS my first time doing a "cat and mouse" cartoon- which seems like a rite of passage for any animator (dunno how central the cat will actually be, but still). Anyway watch through to when it loops and see all the reference photos of my hands!

In my last rat post, I mentioned I already had an old rat idea that I wasn't sure if I wanted to go with or not. That was about ship rats, but I've decided to make a different film, about the rats that live in the walls! The first idea had a very clear narrative as soon as I thought of it- whereas this one is a bit more of a mystery to me, like I have concepts I want to explore and vague ideas of settings and characters, but the narrative is something I can figure out as I go. Maybe that means it'll be some open ended vignettes in a world, or maybe it'll have a clear story- but in any case I think this means I'm starting a proper "film film" again!