Character Animation

I swear this is what happens anytime I leave the room...

I created this pretty much straight ahead. I had the whole idea, but no storyboarding, or any planned specific poses, shots, etc. I just went for it.
For my dollar character I was inspired by the movement of the Magic Carpet in Disney's Aladdin. I wish I had been able to get some squash and stretch to give it more character, but turns out that is a little hard to do with a real object...
A couple actions I am pleased with the way they turned out: When the character climbs out of the pocket, and when it puts its "hands" on the bag to help balance while it climbs down. These both feel pretty good to me in terms of animation.

And now, the actual process:
To start with, I taped some really this flexible wire to both sides of the bill. This allowed me to twist and pose the character.

Barely even noticeable :)

I had a lot of problems with keeping "limbs" in contact with the ground until I started using sewing pins to hold the corners of the bill to the bag. Once I got the character to the ground, I stuck the pins (still stuck through the bill) into little lumps of clay to hold everything up. Also had various sticks and props behind the bill to keep it up.

Here you can see the pins in the corners, and one of my prop-up sticks

I was working alone, so I did all the posing and shooting myself. Sorry for the really shaky video—I don't have a tri-pod (really should get one though...) so I taped the camera to the back of a chair... Spent several hours trying to do some image stabilization, but then my computer crashed and I gave up.