I was hired as an additional animator towards the end of the production. I was flown out to Portland and worked about 5 weeks. Each shot involved acting out live action reference and reviewing it with the directors, so there was days of work before the animation even started because there was a lot of slow back & forth communication. The animation director invited me to stay for the remainder of production but my wife and I had another project to do back home for our animation business, Threadwood.
This was harder than it looks! The costuming had to be modified to allow for the crouch, and the foam puppet body was fighting with the joints to get him low enough to pick up the pinecone.
This scene wasn't included in the final film. It took 3 weeks, not including all the work from other departments!
I did this one pretty quickly. I did my best to avoid moving the dirt, but I mindlessly blew some air out of my nose at one point and it was downhill from there, hehe.