The Beginning

To start out, let's create a character

Max

I wanted his shape to be pretty basic, what an average and typical dog would look like. I classified him as an Anatolian Shepard Mix, but he can be pretty much anything.

Refining the lines, I didn't like how big his tail was so I modified it and evened out his legs a little bit. Overall, I think he turned out nice, a bit too much detailed in my opinion but it was nothing that added too much difficulty when animating.

Louix

Louix was as simplistic of a design as i wanted it to be. Nothing very fancy and I wanted him to look a little kept together as his background personality was very organized. 

I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how i was going to express his motion, I decided his "hand" would be the lever you typically see on fire hydrants, and that it would move about as he talked. I also added a mustache later into the animating process.

Digitize

I was actually quite impressed with myself and how well i did digitizing Max, the "hair" or "fur" of his body gave me a little bit of trouble, but overall i think he looks quite handsome for my first digitize of him.

I wanted to keep his colors quite neutral as his character is very offsetting and he only shows distaste in things. 

Louix was a bit easier to digitize obviously because of his simplistic design. Keep in mind I added the Mustache later into the animating process. His lever on his side moves throughout the film as if he is pointing at objects. His main source of movement is with his eye.

Environment

As a very minimalist person, i wanted to keep the environment quite neutral and only express the fact that it was a small park. In some scenes in my project i added a few more clouds and a trash can. I also tweaked the hills coloring a little bit to show darker lights and vice versa.

I later scratched the idea to add the person in the final story line as animating max and louix was difficult enough and I didn't want to burden myself any further.

The main story line I wanted to express was to always listen and follow directions, as one can see Max is told not to pee on the fire hydrant however Max is a stubborn dog and does as he pleases, so there on he does it anyway and gets electrocuted.

After all is set and done, I am quite happy with the outcome as I had never used any animating software before, the movement for Max took the most time as his walk cycle was difficult to rig. I also learned how to add lightning to the video so i was quite excited about that as well.