Cat and Mouse

The first step to creating cat and mouse was to come up with the characters. I did many sketches of just vague robots trying to brainstorm ideas. Eventually I came to the idea of doing a quadraped made of a battery and created a mouse.

Roll your mouse over this image to see the model come to life.

Next I had to come up with how this mouse would be interacting with his world. I decided that I would like to animate a chase scene. Therefore a robotic cat would fit nicely into this world.

Roll your mouse over this image to see the model come to life.

Once I had decided what my characters would be I had to come up with a story. I decided on four shots that would show a short chase scene in which the mouse is escaping from the cat across the table. Once the character models were done, i had to rig them, which is the process of adding bones and joints inside their bodies allowing them to have movement. I then had to animation run cycles for both the cat and the mouse. After that I tackled designing the backdrop.

Once I had done that it was time to bring the characters into the scene and animate the chase. I keyed all the motions including the pen on the chain by hand. I felt like I had better control that way.

So in the end here is the project-
Title: Cat and Mouse
Program: Maya 2009 and Adobe After Effects CS3
Time: Two Weeks
Class: Animation II, Drexel University - Philadelphia, PA
Song: Cat and Mouse by Cormaster9000 of newgrounds.com