070512 - vixens animation tests

I've been working on some animation tests of the previous fox design. I wanted to test a) the "animatability" of the actual design and b) how I could create the cleanup style in a more time-efficient way.  There are some slight differences in the design here, like the head is smaller (which I think I prefer, actually) and I just forgot the chest gradient but I achieved the style I wanted to get across so I'm happy. It took quite a while but a lot of it was due to the fact I had not done it before - for example, I created all the body shapes first in a base colour to test the shapes, and then later applied the gradients in Flash, meaning I could bypass Photoshop, but now I know it works in the final clean-up process I can just create the shapes and gradients at the same time.

In the below video I have the rough animation, the clean up animation, and a textured animation. The texture was a basic watercolour wash applied using a track matte in After Effects. It's very subtle and not as noticeable as I'd hoped, so I'm thinking it might not be necessary. Removing the texture would certainly cut down some time in the process so I'm considering it.