I have now completed this 2D animation assignment and I am very happy with the final outcome. I used the song 'Bird Cage' by Camille Saint-Saens which plays along side my story of a bird trying to make a grumpy man happy. One aspect of this animation I think came out well is the timing with the music and animation. When the musics rhythm become more energetic the bird begins flying which goes well with the literal movement of the song. Also the juxtaposition of the grumpy man with the uplifting music helps to isolate this character even more from the joyful setting he is in. I have also challenged the stereotype of all characters having a more caring side to them, which can be seen in the abrupt ending.
In terms of the animation I have tried to use a similar style as my influences such as the artist Ben Washam who worked with Chuck Norris. His style was very fluid and loose which gave the characters personality. I believe this worked with my characters who are supposed to show happy expressive movements. This kind of movement can be seen in the opening scene with all the character walking by, they all have happy facial expressions and their movements are all similar to the mood of the song.
The animation for the bird was the most important part because it shows the mood and story that I'm trying to get across, which is trying to make a grumpy man happy. The positions and facial expressions came out well and audience feedback shows that they could tell what the bird was trying to do. 
The process of creating this animation is how I have done all my animations. I start by animating all the character movements on a rough background layer, then I add in the final backgrounds and sound effects. The reason I do this is because mixing between background and character work can change make the process messy with too many layers. I can also decide how the background should look depending on what the character is doing. The background art looks clean and fits in well with style of the characters. Originally I wanted the backgrounds to have more detail, however this made it difficult to get the camera perspective correct so I stuck with a simple look which worked. 
As I said in my earlier posts, I am using an fbf style of animation. Which as you can see on the right is an example of that process. Since I am using 24 fps I added a 1 frame gap between each movement which gave the movement a better pace. The layers in the corner also show each body part is separately animated which makes it easier to have control of the characters joints. The animation of characters looks smooth with no unrealistic parts.
Now that this animation is finished I believe I have achieved what I wanted to based on my studies of artists. Ben Washam was my main influence as well as some earlier work such as 'Felix the cat' which has a fluid style to express the characters movements and emotions. I wanted to create this effect with my animation because the music I chose has a lot of energy to it, so I wanted to show this on the animation side as well. I would like to develop the skill Ben Washam has which is being able to show a characters personality without the use of music and voices, this animation is hopefully the beginning of learning that process.
