How it was made:
To start off with, I drew a lot of different little pixel outlines of cats in different poses. I sort of knew that I wanted the cat to pounce and play with a toy, and then to somehow return back to its original position (so that the animation would loop neatly). Luckily, Moke (my angel cat) was around to model for me =).
After I had the basic timeline in my head, and the rough outlines of the cats for most of the frames, I tidied them up so that the outlines were clean. This meant spending a lot of time zoomed in, dotting pixels, then zooming out to check that the images still looked cat-like!
I found that I needed to draw some extra cats (especially for when the cat gets up after lying down). Once I had the animation running smooth(ish)ly, I compiled a 2-colour .gif file of the outlines to test it out.
It seemed to work well, although certain sections were a little fast. I then commenced colouring in each frame, shading by dotting little darker pixels...
I slowed down parts of the animation (by adding more frames) so that it ran more smoothly, and I made sure that each frame was the same length (0.1 seconds). I then added a border, the background and the text (on a separate layer, so that I could have it showing behind the animation, and have it appearing in all frames). I also added some glitter layers over the text (transparent layers with little dots and stars in the foreground), so that I could have one glitter layer showing per frame, and cycle through them in random order. This gives the effect of glitter over the text.
Finally, I compiled the two final versions of the animation - one with glitter, and one without:
I really enjoyed the challenge of making this animated cat, and I am happy with the finished product =D.
~Adrielle =)
