The shadowy deer in fear, continue on their dash over the deer crossing, closely followed by some hungry silhouetted wolves and also a hungry eagle.

In case you missed the update to last week’s drawing, it’s now an animation with a new herd of four deer crossing the road every few seconds. Technically it’s the same deer, only recycled to conserve digital ink. Originally, there were around 290 frames in the animation, but this produced a file size that was too large, even when optimised. I then removed every second frame over two iterations, so it’s effectively one quarter of the initial size. It also increased the speed of the deer, so I had to slow them down a little by increasing frame delay times.

The deer in fear appeared to be running from something, so this week I’ve given them some furry and feathered predators. In keeping with the dark shapes described by the nearby sign, these predators are in shadow form also. Perhaps they noticed the sign, saw the deer frequently crossing there and organised an ambush.

It would be nice to create a subsequent animation for this one. Maybe one day.

The wolf (template) in this was created from scratch, but I did cheat somewhat with the eagle. I found one I had prepared earlier. It made an appearance as a background photo inside the house on “Cassowary Bird Bath”. It only needed colouring black, the chopping off a leg and a wing, and then the relocating the remaining wing to make it more of a side-on view, as per the two legged deer and wolves.

It does looks rather busy, as I think wild animals attacking should.