Animating an Image

It's been a hectic week as I've buried my head in my work, from the recent Age UK (Dialouge ignites Change) project I've chosen to do a continuation on that brief where this time I'm animating the image that I made for it. Because the original image was not planned to be animated at first and since I lost the work files I've had to redraw and paint the image so that the background acts as a matte painting for key frames and cel layers to go on top, in essance I've divided the original picture into layers so that they can move freely.

I recently bought myself a wacom cintiq pen tablet and display to help me work a little more precise and efficient, ideal for doing hand drawn animation and I gotta say it's comfy to work with. With this I've drawn the character and key frames quicker than if I were to scan, clean and trace.

Things that are to be animated have been redrawn and although they aren't perfect to the detail of the still image I've worked from they are more clean, bright and fluid looking. This will be my first animation so I hope to show it off before Easter and to a nice quality that reflects my skill level with the new software and techniques I'm using. The new software I'm using is Adobe After Effects which can make for some amazing results. My classmates tend to go for a puppet like animation where as they set a program to move the segments, it's a neat way of getting to grips with the software but I'm trying to avoid that. Hand drawn animation has a warmth to it and that's what I want to see, it's what I bought a cintiq for.