Pigeon Progress: Cos You Haven't Had Enough Of These Already...

I have reviewed my Blue walk cycle and for the most part, I am happy with it. I think I need to change the head bobbing a bit however. In the cycle, the head only bobs forward when one foot goes forward, never the other. Pigeon's walk movements are fast and the head bobbing is too slow due to not bobbing forward every time both her feet step forward. Dave disagrees with me, thinking this will be too fast but after reviewing various pigeon videos and looking at pigeons while walking to and from college every day (not to mention the pigeons that eat all the bird food in my garden) and I think its worth experimenting at the very least. I'll save it until I've done a few more line tests however.

Leading onto my latest progress. Yesterday I got started on Lilac's rage puff line test. Basically, I wanted her feathers to fluff up with rage before her chest puffs out intimidatingly. Unfortunately my laptop ran out of battery and I wasn't able to find a working plug anywhere so I wasn't able to do much except do the key frames and an inbetween or two but I got the basic gist of the action across.

So far so good and it's not quite finished yet. Which is lucky because I went onto YouTube and out of curiosity searched for a pigeon puffing up (which would have been logical to have done before now but come on, you're giving me too much credit here), leading me to this hilarious gem. I wasn't sure how far to puff out the chest, either to emphasis it for comedic value or whether that would stretch the bounds of reality that bit too much. Upon seeing this however, I don't think I have much to worry about now.

Good lord. I don't think I've laughed so hard at a pigeon in my life. And I've seen THESE.

The animal lover in me has pity for the pigeon. The heartless sod in me is greatly amused however. Rainbow wings, whut? Besides, it doesn't seem to be bugging him too much. Better not anyway.

I rejected the idea of the Tommy pigeon character for the animation (apparently they're called Pouter pigeons? I think I'll have to look deeper into that) due to having too many characters already. However, maybe as something to add in my portfolio, I'll design one. I mean come on, look at these things and tell me you don't want to draw them/ They're the male equivalent of Jessica Rabbit... for pigeons!

And this would probably be Lilac if she were a pouter and a male. Kind of a funny concept. Gender bended pigeons...

Say what you want about pigeons, you can't deny that they're hilarious.

Anyhow, upon looking at the first video, I've determined that I need to add maybe a couple more frames at the end, puffing her chest out to the max. Her head needs to also touch her back and her beak pressed into her chest. Maybe have her run offscreen too, after an unknown victim. *coughGreencough*

Certainly a lot to think about. now, I believe I will go back to laughing at the first video before continuing my line test. As any normal(ish) person would do.