This is an animation I created using Adobe After Effects for a college course. The animation shows the battle between a small undead king versus a much larger dragon using some simple techniques in After Effects as well as puppet tools with the Duik Bassel plugin. It tells the beginning of a story of a young knight who suddenly became king dying on his first day. Now given a second chance, he must avenge his old village and save the world from evil. The ending here is very open, with the idea that I could go back to it at any point should I choose to. It feels a lot more like the beginning of a video game or TV show than a standalone project, but I think that tone suits it very well. With this animation I hoped to exercise my After Effects knowledge and learn to use Duik Bassel successfully. I also hoped to entertain a little in the process, making a funny short cartoon. I hope the audience can appreciate the lighthearted fun this animation has to offer, and I hope it inspires others to try and create more cartoons like this. After Effects can be a very strong tool for animating cartoons, and I feel it commonly gets tossed aside in favor of Toon Boom or Adobe Flash or similar tools. In order to make this a fully original cartoon, I used character designs of my own creation and did all of my own artwork. This short story actually began as a single drawing I did months ago, and since turned into a mini comic and now a fully realized animation. I hope to get the opportunity to complete more projects like this, as it was both a pleasure to create and a wonderful learning experience.

Pictured below is the original comic that this animation was based on. Some of the designs and scenes were altered for the sake of the animation, though it is mostly a fairly true adaptation. I illustrated each of the images below in Clip Studio Paint, and the initial idea was that with each frame the image would get a little larger. It is meant to be printed on two sides of a standard letter sized paper, folded up in a way that allows you to read the comic as it unfolds.