Project "Uglerede" - The Danish Film School collaboration

(The project name is the Danish word for "owl's nest")

We had director-students from The Danish Film School in Copenhagen come over and direct us to animate chosen segments of their own storyboards.
The idea was to practice communication and teamwork between director and animators and also between animators. We had several scenes between us that were immediately adjacent, so keeping awareness of the other guys' first and last keys were vital for continuity hook-ups... Good practice. :)

"Uglerede" was the story that my group was given.
The director also provided a loose model-sheet for the character that we had to make more 'animate-able'. We pretty much used the first day in pre-production, deciding on a mutual style and coming up with compromises so that we all reached a look that we could draw consistently and that the director wanted...
My second draft-sheet ended up as half of the influence. I had got the graphic style closer to what the director wanted, and the other animator who influenced the look had got the proportions right...

Here's the part of the ref-material that I provided:

With my great love for drawing birds and especially owls, this project was almost as if made for me ;D
That's why I chose the close-ups, particularly a scene with a difficult angle and motion. It's the project that made the most people go "how do I make an owl cry?" simultaneously... I've never had this much fun on a depressing scene.

For clarification; the storyboard is about an owl woman who is heartbroken after losing her boyfriend and is moving into her apartment, which is really lousy, she realizes how alone she is, starts crying, but ultimately decides that she wishes to forget her boyfriend and recover from her heartbreak...

I picked these scenes:
Sc_12 - mid-shot - she takes off her soggy, wet hat.
Sc_30 - face close-up - straining (to turn a radiator-knob)
Sc_32 - mid-shot - she gives up, throws her head back and cries, is about to fall to her knees

Thumbnails for these scenes:

Here's the fully inbetweened, tied-down ruffs. For copyright purposes, the full animatic is not included.

 
The bag-strap is missing in some of them, but those are ol line-tests. It is drawn on the final scans we will provide for the director...

At least now I can draw an owl crying desperately... But with that beak I'm glad our project involved no lip-sync.