First scene of a new animation

This is a little snippet from a new animation which I started work on today.  I have failed to complete projects in the past because they contained a scene with a close-up face shot.  Capturing the right mood in a face scene is absolutely key to the narrative of a short film so if your animation skills happen to let you down at that point it can be a real kick in the guts and put a stop to the whole project.

But I've done the face scene for this new animated short film so you can imagine I am feeling pretty chuffed.  This simple "Bemused stare with blink" scene will be the opening shot of my lead character, setting the mood for the story.

The sound, in case you're wondering, was produced by Oliver Owen.  I haven't worked with Ollie in over a year but we had plenty of sound files left over from when we last bumped shoulders on a project and I occasionally dip back into that resource when working on projects.  This probably won't be the score I use in the final edit but it certainly represents the mood.