The Ears Have It

I'm so glad I added ear controls to these characters -- partly because they're just fun to animate, but they also give another opportunity to add some subtleties to expressions. I'm generally posing them based on dog behavior, and how dogs (and some other animals) broadcast their emotions through their ears -- up generally indicates alertness, interest or confident aggression; down indicates sadness or passivity; forward indicates attentiveness, and back is disinterest or passive aggression. I'm keeping these moves fairly small so that they only get noticed unconsciously, if they get noticed at all. But I think these cues help give an extra recognizable oomph to certain poses -- even to viewers who aren't fluent in dog.

On the progess front, I've gotten about 1/3 of the shots finaled and rendered in the last week, and have two weeks to go. Looks like I'll get done on time, though some shots will be more polished than others.