INTRODUCTION

The animation of the small, stylized plush dragon tells a playful, childlike story. First, he hides shyly, peeks out cautiously, tiptoes carefully across the table, and finally blows a paper airplane into the air with great force, watching it proudly. The challenge was to create a charming, stylized movement style that captures his personality and to time the actions precisely on clear beats so that each movement feels lively and easily readable.


ORGANIZATION & PLANNING

I had full responsibility for the animation and only needed to ensure that it matched the rest of the provided environment, a Pixar-style children’s room. The overall project featured a timelapse segment of the desk in front of a window, showing the progression of the day. The animation began when the light on the desk was turned on. The work started with a brainstorming session together with the rigger to gather ideas and adjust the rig accordingly. I structured the work by dividing my steps into distinct phases:
blockout, key poses, breakdowns, in-betweens, and final splines. This allowed me to maintain a clear overview at all times and review and adjust the animation in stages. Additionally, I incorporated regular feedback loops with the rigger and project leads, enabling me to respond early to technical constraints and continuously improve the animation.


REFERENCES

To get a sense of the correct timing and beats, I watched various cartoons. For this project, I aimed for only a lightly stylized animation, so I based the movements on how children hide,
glance around briefly, tiptoe, and blow out candles. For the starting pose, I observed real plush toys to see how they slump when sitting, using their natural stiffness to make the subtle movement details believable.


WORKFLOW ANIMATION

The first idea was to have him jump back when the light turned on, then get up and walk to a sheet of paper to draw a little heart. Fortunately, the physical limitations of the character, the chubby volume and very short arms, made that idea impractical and led me to the concept with the paper airplane.
I started with a sneaky walk cycle as the basis for the animation until the environment was made available. Once the environment was ready, I began the blockout as a stepped animation.
Since the key poses are crucial for this animation, it was important to me that they were perfect from the start, allowing me to later focus on timing, breakdowns, and in-betweens. I quickly realized that silhouette was also important, for example, ensuring that the wings and tail did not intersect to maintain clarity in the poses. Arcs and smooth movements were especially critical for the little dinosaur to make the animation feel fluid.
After the poses were optimized with feedback, I considered the best way to approach the in-betweens, hands first, head first, etc. I decided on “hands first, rest follows,” which gave the animation a playful yet cautious character. During the spline phase, the timings were made slightly “poppier,” antics were extended, and holds were emphasized, for example, when taking a breath before blowing, to show the force behind the action. Squash and stretch were further amplified in these poses. To give the dinosaur a fitting end pose, I had the paper airplane leave the frame first and then fly across the screen again, after which the dinosaur proudly followed its flight with his gaze.
Technical challenges included the chubbiness and design of the model (e.g., seams), which required adjustments to the rig. I had to tweak many areas and work with twists to achieve smoother deformations. The rig’s sticky-lip setup was combined with manual key animation of the lips to create a natural mouth movement while blowing. The foot controls were not horizontally aligned, so the foot plants had to be entirely hand-keyed.


GROUPWORK & FEEDBACK

The close collaboration with the rigger and the continuous adjustments to the rig were crucial for the success of the animation. Regular feedback sessions were held to optimize the
movements. Through open communication, technical issues could be identified and resolved early, allowing the creative ideas for the animation to be fully realized.


CHALLENGES, SOLUTIONS & LEARNINGS

The biggest challenges lay in the technical limitations of the rig and the volume and scaling issues of the model. Since the plush toy was not created to real-world scale, problems arose when adjusting it to the size of the environment. Our solution was to animate it at its original size and then implement and render it in the environment as an enlarged Alembic cache. The chubbiness was a technical challenge that had to be considered in the poses to prevent intersections and ensure proper rig deformations. To guarantee this, constant feedback between animation and rigging was especially important to identify these limitations early and
find solutions. These solutions included workarounds, manual keying, and targeted tweaking. In addition to these technical challenges, it was also an animation challenge for me, as this was
my first stylized character and I had to learn the style of animation. The project strengthened my understanding of timing, exaggeration, and tweaking deformations.


CONCLUSION

The plush dinosaur project showed me how important it is to recognize technical limitations and develop creative solutions. Despite the rig’s constraints, I was able to realize the animation as I had envisioned it in the end, and the project gave me the opportunity to expand my skills in timing, stylized animation, and recognizing clear poses. Additionally, it was always a joy to look at that cute little face and see how proud he was to make his paper airplane fly.