The personal goal of my final project is to improve my skills in frame by frame animation. I was a regular visitor of Newgrounds, a site comprised of animators in what was then Macromedia Flash, starting around 7th grade. For a good amount of time, I was merely an observer, but one day in 10th grade, I watched a classic animation called the Angry White Boy Polka , and from there I wanted to have an expertise in animation. I got Flash, and I learned about manipulation of motion using motion tweens and movie clips, as well and creating somewhat original works. Even now, I’m learning about new ways to manipulate through motion tweens from observing other animators such as Adam Phillips, as well as by practicing and using techniques presented by animators in the Clock Crew, a online amateur animation group. Despite all the work I’ve done in flash, I haven’t explored frame-by-frame too often, even though I had a constant desire to. I designed many characters and creatures that I could use to practice animating frame-by-frame, including the Labbard, a cross between a lizard and a rabbit. When designing characters like the Labbard, I try to keep in mind that simplicity is the most loveable concept for many audiances, which I learned from watching the Another Day Series

When presented with the stop-motion animation project, I was drawn to the Labbard again because it was a simple design that I felt had the potential to have a personality that people would be interested in. I used the principles I learned from manipulating motion tweens to guide me to animate my character in frame-by-frame. However, I ran out of time to implement what I originally intended for the Labbard for the initial project, so I decided to animate the original intention for my final project. What I plan on doing is to have the Labbard trying to get an apple, only to always fall short of his goal until the very end.