"P" for Penguin

This here is my very first Flash animation, done when I was a junior at UMass Dartmouth (I was technically a sophomore in the Electronic Imaging program, but it was my third year at the school). For the project, we were to take a letter of the alphabet, and show it transforming into something that begins with that letter. We had a strict time limit for how long it could be, so it's pretty fast-paced...

First off, I apologize for the sluggish frame rate. I guess it can't handle the type of video that it originally was. The actual animation runs at 30 frames per second. So once I get that worked out, I may post it again (it does the same thing when I try uploading to YouTube or Google Video).

Anyway, I really went nuts with the bouncy effect. Maybe a little too nuts. I remember trying to pay close attention to detail... for example, I gave each letter that bounces in a unique personality (obviously incredibly limited, but it was still fun to play around with), and for the most part, they each come in a completely different way from each other.

We had storyboarded our ideas out, but a lot of the small things came to me as I was actually animating. I remember, originally the beak wasn't going to emerge from the snowball at the very end. But as I was animating that section, somehow that idea just kind of... popped into my head, and I thought to myself "...I'd be stupid NOT to do that!" Especially since the snowman had no nose to begin with. It was like it was meant to be.

My brother, Brian, provided the voice of the penguin. I'm aware that penguins don't quack, but... whatever. Around :18, if you pause it on just the right frame, you can see his initials.

Anyway... that's that. I'll probably post my first 3D animation sometime soon as well.