Magical Cat: Episode 1

My wife and I created this short clay animation for a larger project called Animation Wild Card. The plan is to organize our animation friends to create shorts from home during quarantine with whatever materials we have available, and release the shorts as episodes every 2 weeks. Check out Animation Wild Card on YouTube for the first full episode.

The idea for this short started with a silly song that I sing to our cat when I get home from work. From that tune, we came up with a short action that would contrast with the excitement of the song. Then, we created simple designs that would be fun and fast to animate.

We only had 2 weeks to make this animation, so I quickly designed a cat so I could start sculpting. My wife had the idea to make him a simple shape to make animating easier.

I handed my sketch off to my wife who sketched up a simple environment and color pallette.

I always like to start with a clay "sketch" using old clay to get a feel for the puppet size. It also allows me to think about what problems I might run into while animating.

I sculpted the body with the final mix of clay and started sculpting eyes. We never use molds because that takes forever and we also don't mind imperfections. In fact, we embrace imperfections!

Eyes and noses after being baked into hard pieces. We eventually painted the eyes with a shimmering nail polish so that they would glisten in the light.

Starting to look like a cat!

I pre-sculpted the cat's second position so that I wouldn't have to do it while animating. I still wound up sculpting a new one while animating anyway. Better to be prepared, though! I made the pupils out of electrical tape which worked out great.

Meanwhile, my wife built a floor, a wall, and these fun, flat props.

This is a fun part of the process. I'm no lighting expert, but I love putting things in place and playing around with the lights. I wanted to recreate our real cat sitting in the sun rays that peak through the blinds in the morning.

I snagged this photo while I was animating just so everyone could see how tiny the cat drool was.

We quickly made this title card after I was done animating the cat. I wound up shooting it out of focus because I wanted to get it done fast. We'll be re-shooting this in our next episode of Magical Cat.