Volume 2 Launch and Apprentice Spotlight

On October 1st, 2025, we officially launched 𝗩𝗢𝗟𝗨𝗠𝗘 𝗧𝗪𝗢 Chapter 1 for the Book of hashtag#Kopernicus. We didn’t think we would make it this far.

To spice up our launch, our 2D Animation Apprentice, Megan Van Hoogmoed, animated the hashtag#corgis in our first sequence, showcasing them playing with a Porcelain Replica of their daily weapon - the Garlic Spear. Porcelain master Wittmund had made the replicas to charm the corgis and he did warn the corgi guards - don’t play with them!

This hashtag#animation highlights the look and feel of our hashtag#Baapolis world, and brings to life our characters. Let’s head behind the scenes to hear Megan’s process and what she had learned animating this sequence.

𝗠𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗡 𝗩𝗛:
I believe the most important thing I learned was to not hold myself back and to go with my instincts. Prior to this internship, I’ve had a habit of holding myself back while animating cartoons to try to keep some degree of realism in the piece. As a result, many times when I tried to create a cartoony feel, it wound up falling flat and not quite having the zany punch I was intending to have. I was encouraged to push my reactions more with these characters, to explore more with smear frames, and really hone in on the essence of cartoony charm that 2D animation can bring to an animation.

My biggest challenge was getting the corgis in the final shot to have two different distinct, but believable, reactions to being disappointed and frustrated… It wasn’t until I tried to think about how each corgi would act specifically towards the situation themselves that the shot started working better. What are the different ways someone could react to being frustrated, to being disappointed? How could I make them distinctly different from each other? … It wasn’t until I watched myself trying to act out the reaction in a mirror that I started picking up unique movements and figuring out the correct timing.

Once the initial story boards were approved, I dove into applying more corgi like movements into the animatic and explored it further into the rough animation, particularly in the squash and stretch movements when they’re playing tug of war with the weapon. It was during this rough animation phase where the art directors encouraged me to push beyond what I had already created.

Finally was adding in the extra details. Though they were small, adding them made a world of difference. Adding in the extra dig to the ground to give it a scooped out appearance, adding in some pushed up grass to the dirt, adding in some extra smear frames, all of it came together to elevate the final product even more and result in something I’m proud of.

To check out our Volume 2 Chapter 1, Visit: https://kopernicus.substack.com/p/wont-wilt 
To view original animation, Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHF2l9yTDcU