Tappy the Nail was the result of a graphic design class where we could choose what medium we wanted to work in. I chose to work in animation using Blender. My instructor gave me goals and guidelines, but other than that, he left it up to me to come up with what I was going to do.
This was the first animated short film I had done. I used Blender for the modeling and animation, then brought in the clips into Adobe Premier Pro to combine clips and sound for the finished result.
One of the greatest challenges for me was the mouth. I had planned on just creating a simple bar with an armature so I could change the shape of the bar, but my instructor said no. He wanted me to incorporate the mouth into the actual body of the nail. Sigh….So I did my research and discovered relative vertex keys.
Then, carefully, with the precision of a cross-eyed drunken monkey, I took my digital knife and cut an opening in Tappy’s face. And with a little digital plastic surgery and the help of relative vertex keys to move the mouth, Tappy had a bonafide mouth that moved and formed the shapes I needed to match the sounds and expressions.
Tappy is a simple little nail that finds delight in a simple little butterfly.
Once I have the video uploaded, I will insert it in place of the image above!