This piece was me bringing forward my 2D fundamentals class assignment to explore the principles of weight and bounce, originally the class assignment was depicted as a ball. Inspired by the people getting confused about my pet rats being mice, I decided to challenge myself by making the main focus an animal character.

 

I leaned into the satire by animating a rat kind of mocking the viewer by showing that it survives a mousetrap with exaggerated bounce and movement. There’s a few layers from the punchline to the purposeful object placement. It’s a tongue-in-cheek irony as well as a playful test of overlapping action. 

 

At the time, we hadn’t learned squash and stretch formally, but I took the initiative to experiment with it after critique. I began adding more elasticity to the character’s form, integrating overlapping action in the tail, and giving it a sense of resilience and personality. I later expanded the animation with a background, a prop (the mousetrap), basic lighting, and sound effects to heighten the absurdity and narrative.