"Trash Panda" - Pets in the City | Behind the Animated Short About a Video Channel and a Wayward Raccoon

What happens when an apartment-living city girl, Sarah, befriends a raccoon named Jake and starts a YouTube channel called Pets in the City? Let’s ask her across-the-street neighbor, Bob - definitely not their biggest fan!

Trash Panda – Pets in the City is my first character-driven animated short in years, based on my original script and featuring artwork from various Cartoon Animator developers on the Reallusion Marketplace.

Watch the episode below, then read on to see how I made it.

"Trash Panda" Pets in the City Ep01 Raccoon Life Funny Animated Cartoon

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Behind the Animation

Inspiration and Characters

I love browsing my Cartoon Animator library and the Reallusion Marketplace for characters that spark ideas, or that I find interesting, and could work well together. Pets in the City started as an experiment using assets I already owned or could easily buy.

I found Sharon (later renamed Sarah) by NewBreed Artist, then a free raccoon by Prosenjit Biswas, who became Jake. Finally, I discovered Bob, also by Prosenjit, whose art style fit nicely with Sarah’s. Giving me the beginnings of a story.

Script

I draft scripts on my phone or Android Tablet with JotterPad, a lightweight app that supports Fountain script and exports proper screenplay PDFs. It lets me write anywhere without being tied to a desk.

The story evolved naturally. Sarah struck me as a city girl who might keep an unusual pet - like a raccoon. As far as I know, raccoons are similar to Australian brushtail possums, always scavenging in cities, it made sense Jake would be sneaking into Bob’s trash. Bob became the grumpy neighbor convinced Jake was guilty, while Sarah defended him on her “Pets in the City” YouTube channel. From there, the script pretty much wrote itself.

What remains of my storyboard in Mooltik.
The last two panels are duplicated half images.
The remaining panels just vanished?

Storyboard

I storyboarded the short using Mooltik, but a glitch corrupted most of the panels. Rather than redo them, I relied on memory and went straight into animating.

Scene Design

For settings, I leaned heavily on Marketplace assets. The city exterior came free from Star Cat Studios, and the balcony from Garry Pye’s Sketchy Scenes, plus several food and furniture props from his many prop packs. I also forgot in the credits to mention Clay Triche for his trash bin prop. 

For Sarah’s apartment interior, nothing in the Marketplace quite matched. I turned to OpenArt AI, using Ideogram V3 to generate several designs. I combined and layered them in Krita so characters could move naturally behind objects.

Sarah's apartment is actually a composite of elements I liked from several alternate
AI generations of the same image created in OpenArt with Ideogram V3.

Animation

Everything was animated in Cartoon Animator 5. I placed characters, added AI-generated voices from Elevenlabs, then built movements using a mix of premade motion clips and manual keyframing.

Sarah’s balcony scene was almost entirely keyframed, since premade motion clips didn’t fit her seated position. Jake was also heavily keyframed - though rigged like a human, I wanted him to move like a raccoon. Bob’s animation used mostly cut-up premade clips.

Lip sync was mostly automated, except for Jake, whose voice came from real raccoon sounds, synced manually. I also paid close attention to each character's hand animation, since expressive hands add so much to performances.

Video Editing and Post Effects

I edited together my exported clips from Cartoon Animator in ShotCut, my go-to free video editor. It’s powerful, does everything I need, and is the only free video editor that handles .FLV files. A file format I use when screen recording my tutorials.

The only real post effect was in the balcony scene: a focus pull from a trash bin in the foreground to Sarah and Jake in the background. Cartoon Animator can’t do that natively, so I handled it in post. You can watch my video below to see how I that was done. Titles and finishing touches were also done in ShotCut.

Creating a Blur, Pull Focus Camera Shot Effect using Cartoon Animator 5 and Video Editing Software

Audio Design

Aside from voices placed in Cartoon Animator for timing, all sound was added in editing: city ambience, bird song, Jake’s footsteps, and a comedic boing for the opening balcony bird. Music and credits were kept simple using a template I apply to all my animations.

The Final Cut

The entire short took about two weeks, averaging three to four hours a day. I’d hoped for one week, but... life. Still, compared to projects that unexpectedly take months, I’ll take two weeks!

I’m pleased with how it turned out, especially since it’s been years since I tackled character-driven animation beyond my Lazy Animator courses. While I don’t plan another Pets in the City episode immediately, consider this a pilot. If I manage my goal of making new one animation each month, Sarah, Jake, and Bob will almost certainly be back.

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