When creating my showreel for the final year of my undergrad degree, I wanted to get more experience drawing characters from professional pipelines.
In my third year of Uni, I had done a bit of animation of Aisling from The Secret of the Kells (2009) made by Cartoon Saloon. So, this time I chose to do a slightly more mainstream animated film that would be instantly recognisable to anyone who saw them – regardless of their interest in animation.
Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty (1959)!
I started by gathering as many character sheets and references as I could, as well as watching various clips from the film when I found the resources available somewhat lacking. Almost every character sheet featuring Merryweather was a combined one of all three of the fairies, so in the end, the character sheets above were pretty much the extent of what I could find.
In terms of the film though, I noticed Merryweather has quite a distinct wiggle she’ll do whenever she is frustrated, and it was so characteristic of her that I wanted to replicate it within my own animation.
I used this .gif as my main reference while key framing, though I chose to exaggerate the movements somewhat.
I think it is worth mentioning now, that I initially chose to do this also as lip-sync practice. To match Merryweather’s angry mood, I chose an audio where she’d be swearing, and began key framing with that audio in place, which is what the video below is showing alongside the reference I recorded for this clip movements.
I ended up not going through with this in order to make it suitable for a more generalised showreel. Though I may one day revisit this depending on what I’m applying for.
But, from here on out, I just chose to focus on Merryweather’s movements and expressions, rather than adding in the lip-sync.
I hadn’t initially noticed, but Sleeping Beauty used coloured linear within their characters, and so though it took me quite a while, I did choose to change my black clean up layers to match the colours of the film itself at the end of this process.