Do It In Ten: Chilly

In the spirit of December do it in ten released the theme Chilly.
So I decided this could be interesting and went on to generate ideas for it.
 adjective, chillier, chilliest.
1.
mildly cold or producing a sensation of cold; causing shivering; chill :
a chilly breeze.
2.
feeling cold; sensitive to cold:
Her hands were chilly.
3.
without warmth of feeling; cool:
a chilly reply.
4.
producing or likely to produce a feeling of fear; frightening:
He told a chilly story of ghosts and murder.
adverb
5.
Also, chillily. in a chill manner:
The wind blew chilly.

My first few idea were to do something with snow, because then it doesn't have to be in colour and its can take a very playful direction. The first few ideas I gad were about icicles and how your tongue can get stuck to them if you lick it. But then I realised this image came from Spirit: The stallion of Cimarron.

 But I was positive I wanted to do something with animals because I would get a chance to work on my character design skills. Another thing that popped into my head was the scene from Brother Bear where they were doing the salmon hunt. It was such playful and nicely animated scene, especially where the main character struggles to catch a fish and falls into the water.

And another thing that came into my mind was obviously the iconic Bambi and Stomper on ice scene,

All of these Disney examples of animals playing in the cold set the tone for me and what I wanted to do. All I really want t do with brief is nicely animate a character playing in snow. no real narrative or story or lesson there, just nice work on my character design and animation skills. So that is what I have started of with. The first thing I did was start sketching character ideas. I just went on a whim and decided to do a fox character because it would be the first animal I'd imagine in the forrest during winter. Also I wanted a slimmer figured animal so it would its movements would be light. Like snow!

Another thing I looked up how other artist have portrayed foxes, and dodge (because some of them have a similar physical appeaance) all it helped me distinguish which features I want to exaggerate and how I want it to look.

Afterwards I went on doing my own sketches and generating ideas for the character.

I liked the pop out chest feature and the bending lines from the neck going onto the ear forming an S shaped character. Another thing I wanted to do is try and imagine the character in a asituation so I went with the Stallion of Cimarron idea of licking an Icicle-

I started enjoying sketching this character so i went on making a few more-

I was really happy with hoe my character was shaping up so i went on and made a run test for it on Flash. First I looked into other examples of running cycles for reffrence

Then I made a stick figured test for reference so I could draw onto it later on.

Then I drew on to of it.

 Something in the cycle did not seem quite right so as I was drawing on it I tried to change it a bit which apparently was not such a good idea, because when it was finished it did not look right at all. I think it is because the front legs should leave the ground later than the back legs, whereas I made them leave the ground at the same time which did not look right. Basically I realised that the all the less were supposed to touch the ground at different times, as if a a human walk cycle. I realised this only when I showed it to other people and they said it does not look like how it should.

I left this project for a bit because we went on holidays. As holidays came I was asked to do a lot of hours at work and I put this project away for whenever I would have more free time.  Unfortunately  that did not happen until January so the competition for Chilly was over before I could finish it which is a shame because I actually enjoyed it. I might just come back to it because I fell in love with the character and I feel like I should do justice by it.