I started off by taking a few photographs of our geese. I used these images as reference when sketching the geese, mainly focusing on the posing and proportions of the birds.
When I had a sketch I was happy with, I saved and imported it into Flash and used it as a template to build my characters. Again I used the photographs as reference for painting the textures and colour of the feathers for both male and female geese.
The most time consuming part of the process was building the character to start with and getting the colours and texture looking right, after which the animation was reasonably quick to complete.
It has been a fun little project and I'll be having another go with some more animation soon, refining the process further and making more good looking animation!
Ta Geoff.