During the rest of the animation process for this film, I decided to include further close-ups to make it more interesting, as well as to reduce the number of walk cycles I needed to animate as these were proving to be quite time consuming due to the fact my characters are animals with four legs.
When I began editing the scenes together, I was at first slightly concerned with how they were coming together as I didn't feel they flowed very well. I therefore tried cutting the scenes in different ways and found making some pauses shorter helped the film to flow better. However, I think adding sound had the biggest impact on this. I found sound effects online, including footsteps on sand and waves, which I used to emphasise different actions. I also found a sound effect of beach ambiance which I used for the entire film to give more of a beach atmosphere. I then added background music to help these sounds come together which I think worked quite well to set the feel of the film.
I think the simple style worked well and helped to keep focus on the events taking place. My main focus was to finish the story, however if I had more time I would have liked to refine some of the lines more and use a higher frame rate to make some of the movements smoother. I enjoyed the challenge of using a technique I hadn't used before, and I'm very happy with the outcome. Even though it was quite a slow process at first as I was learning to use Photoshop, I soon became more comfortable with the technique and will definitely use the skills I have learned from this in future animations.