"The Wheels on the Bus"

   Back in June, I was approached to do a short for "The Wheels on the Bus" by Sockeye. The only provision that I was asked to follow was to make the Bus a character along the lines of Thomas the Tank Engine. They already have a short in their playlist for this song, so I thought about what would make my version different than is already there? Going further I asked myself what would make my version different than the hundreds of other versions of "Wheels on the Bus" on Youtube?

   I decided I needed a little bit of a story to go along with the track, and more importantly I felt that we needed to feel like we were actually going someplace with this Bus. So I concocted the characters that we meet and a small journey that builds as the short moves along. I posted a small preview here a few weeks ago. At last its finally posted and ready to share.

   For this, I wanted to get back to my roots a bit more. I wanted to put as much traditional animation as I could fit into the schedule. The other mission was to make it visually interesting other than just ink and paint so I pushed for a water color effect. Custom brushes were built in Harmony for the character animation, and the backgrounds were painted in Photoshop. I had previous experience building the look for the Secret Seven spot I worked on last winter, but for this short i was more inspired by Miyazaki's water color sketches for My Neighbor Totoro. I liked that rough pencil line on a more saturated palette.

   The only thing I didn't handle was the sound effects that were added in after final delivery. Enjoy!