Animation: Character exploration: Stop-motion Toadstool

I've been having some fun with plaster scene again, I wanted to get a feel how I could get a toadstool to feel like a character. It's not in time, and it's simple, but it's just a warm up :P

Music: Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

Animation: Life Drawing : Week 21

Figure 01                                    Figure 02

Figure 03                                    Figure 04

Figure 05                                    Figure 06

Animation : Influence Maps : Ebullient

Animation : Initial Ideas

Here are some notes I've jotted down to begin with....

1. The Verve Video (Link), Toadstool with things coming from left and right as he dances along, he bumps them away with hips, head (a football appears and he headers it away) etc. - A happy version of the video .
2. Ring colour of a toadstool, he pulls it off and it becomes a frisbee. 
3. Top and bottom separate for some reason?
4. Instead of the toadstool rotting, he could just pop back into the ground- some toadstools pop up in the morning, but he outdoes them and really pops up, he then spends the whole day bouncing around playing while the others just stand there, he doesn't want to stop, but as the sun goes down everyone else gets sucked back into the ground and he is left lonely, so he goes too.
5. Pigs sniffing for truffles, toadstool is too energetic for pigs to catch him.
6. Wakes up with an object next to him (dropped coke can or something), he doesn't know what it is but wants to be it's friend- energetically trying to find things to do with his new friend.
7. Wakes up, fellow mushrooms are standing still as usual, but he wants more, he sees the forest as a playground, slides down trees, swings across stuff etc.
8. Some people having a picnic, they have a radio blasting, the mushroom hears it and starts dancing - breakdancing or something.
9. Grows up next to footpath, the people that walk past all have different types of music playing, as they walk past the mushroom starts doing different dance styles to each piece. 
10. Bunch of fungi, he's the most enthusiastic, but he is stuck in the middle of them all, they're all grumpy but his energy to try and get out eventually gets all the other toadstools enthusiastic.
11. Bunch of toadstools, person having a picnic nearby puts music on, the toadstools start bopping along to it but the one toadstool springs out and does the main dance role.
12. A basket of button mushrooms and the one odd toadstool on a kitchen side, he was picked by accident and wants to go home, the animation takes us through terrors of the kitchen like escaping the knife, the frying pan etc, but he is happy to be having an adventure....
13. Somehow he bites himself and gets high off his magic mushroom properties.
14. Feet walking through a field, toadstool jumps or gets snagged onto the foot, the feet then get into a plane and it's a skydiving scene.

Animation : Influence Maps : Toadstools

Animation : Research: Toadstools

In order to do a successful animation of a toadstool, I need to know about them. 

Figure 01

This is an image of the life cycle of a toadstool, the web page this is from is a study from the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh;

http://www.biology.ed.ac.uk/research/groups/jdeacon/microbes/basidio.htm

To put it simply, the spores of a toadstool disperse, they fuse, then disperse, then when the conditions are correct, they germinate and there the result of what we commonly know a toadstool to look like, and the cycle repeats. Of course it isn't that simple, but that's all I need to know of that. 

Toadstools and mushrooms are pretty hard to tell apart, some cultures consider whether the specimen is poisonous or not as the deciding factor for it to be a mushroom or toadstool but this is not the case for everybody.

Animation : Research: Existing animations of Toadstools / Mushrooms

I wanted to see what other animated of toadstools / mushrooms are out there, here are some from youtube.... 

Willy Walk Cycle Re-Post

For some amusement, here is a re-post of a walk cycle I drew last year....

Animation : Introduction

The Hand-drawn animation project: Great Fun!

From Phil's mystical Blue Box / Envelope I withdrew the following two slips of paper:

Ebullient : 

Overflowing with enthusiasm or excitement; exuberant.

Toadstool:

Self Portrait Update

When I started this painting I made several thick layers of paint to give texture. How this texture looked wasn't a problem, as long as there was another aspect to look at. Every morning I see how this texture has worked out for me. In some light the painting looks like a smoothed faced me, but when the light is coming from the side, I see a deteriorated older version of myself. The light shining on the texture casts shadows and makes the skin look aged. Take a look....

Figure 01

Figure 02                               Figure 03