The cat animation had enough character that reference material was needed. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get a cat to do something on cue, but the easiest solution was to film myself pantomiming the swatting motion. For my own benefit, I’ll leave that video out of this, but the next step was to roughly hand animate the motion. Draftsmanship wasn’t paramount since this was a reference. The shapes were cleaned up in After Effects and the reactions of the other shapes/letters were then added in.

The bounding animations aim to evoke the big, doofy strides of a running dog. Two versions were created, one that lingered on the animation to better sell the effect and a short version for brevities sake. Both communicate the motion, but the shorter of the two was better for endtags.

Chewy wanted a way to bring their packaging design into the endtag in order to reinforce that branding in both the digital and physical worlds. The broader concept for this one was to illustrate the joy that was contained within the box, eagerly waiting to be opened. The first attempt felt a little flat, so I added fullscreen wipe that helps add depth to the animation feel and makes the final logo lockup feel more complete.