Hamada-san draws her work in acrylics on paper, scans them in, and then does some touch-ups in Photoshop. Everything she does looks great with a distinctive style. The first teaser is here.
The bird above is fully animated and moves about the scene. As the project’s animator (gasp!) I have been forced to learn a lot about animation to take the illustrations of Hamada-san and make something that looks halfway decent.
I got some great advice from my talented animator friend Leo Martinez on a squirrel animation I was working on. You can see a test below. The sequence is animated from only two illustrations (a stand and a jump pose). I had no idea it was possible to create so much motion with Flash’s free transform tool. I don’t think I have a knack for animation but I am having a lot of fun working with it.