Feel Good Birds Research

I've been asked twice now about whether my feelgood birds animation has been influenced by any particular person or style. My answer is that I can't really pin down a specific artist, illustrator, movement or style. I look at lots of different things which have influenced the look of the animation.

This first one, below, was just a sketch I did once I figured out the layout and colour. But actually, the construction lines worked quite well with it, in comparison to the one below this one, and decided to keep them in and work them into it. Although, I wanted the background sketches much more subtle.

One of the first things I did was changed everything to square (below, not the video), mainly because of the way the characters were drawn, it made the birds feel part of the scene and vice versa. I taught my self to use the pen tool in photoshop to create the curves. I used to think it was really complicated to use, but have now got my head round it.
I also wanted to start making my own brushes in photoshop and after watching this toutorial, I created my own which gave me the texture you see on the main branch...

I experimented with adding sketches with thinker lines, it looked really out of place and ugly to look at

Even a neater version looked bad...

After I'd hit a brick wall, i decided to look around on the websites i regularly check. One which i love called Grain Edit gave me some inspiration and also an ex student of Stockport College Chris Madden. I can't tell you what I saw as I can't remember, all i can say is that it inspired me to add the brush texture I'd made to different parts of the background, only subtly though, just to hint at the roughness of the style.

This was the almost final background, only apples need to be added...

Lastly, in terms of technique, I was inspired by an animation which was made on a small scale called 'Nosy Bear'. I find that my drawings look nicer when very small so this whole animation, like nosy Bear, fitted in one sketchbook....