I wanted to animate my robot that I created for the gig poster. Since I was originally inspired by robots in popular animations, like Howl's Moving Castle and Wall-E, I studied their movements. I wanted to see which characteristics I could adapt to my little robot to make it interesting.

First I started by looking at clips from Howl's Moving Castle, studying the legs of the house. At first, I noticed that each of the legs moved at separate times, moving the body forward. As I looked closer, I then realized that the two back legs moved in sync with each other and the front legs did the same as well! I wanted to apply this to my robot.

As the castle emerges from the fogginess, we see it in all it's majestic. Notice that the legs, although very mechanical like, have a human-like quality to them. Each piece of the leg is seperated, built by different pieces of metal. 

Like Howl's castle I wanted to create the La Machina (The Machine) based on these movements. I wanted my robot guy to have the same feel. The walking movement was difficult for me to figure out in After Effects.

Below are the different parts of the legs. I began to separate them into different layers in order to use them in After Effects.

I also drew inspiration from WALL-E, because although structurally he's built different, he's personality is just so lovable! For the most part he doesn't say a word throughout the movies but we are able to follow he's journey through his actions and the way WALL-E was animated.

These were my complete assets minus the music notes:

This is one of the first clips where I got the robot to move it's legs.

I tried my best throughout this project to figure out how to animate La Machina. I think this little robot needs more work. Despite the challenges I faced with running out of storage and my computer almost imploding in on itself, I believe that I animated my robot to that best I could!