This is a scene in progress. The clown pastor has been duplicated and the second layer painted white so he becomes completely opaque. He was then turned off and the background was painted behind him. I only really needed to paint the area behind his arm since the only action is him reaching towards the woman. I decided to keep the motion minimal so his arm only bends at the elbow a tiny bit.
The shot is less than a second long, so I didn’t want an over the top movement. After I finished working on him, the drawing for the woman and the background was turned back on. For an animation this simple, I just used the puppet pin tool in After Effects. I put a pin at his elbow and at his hand and a third pin at the base of his body to keep his body from moving.
By animating the clown, I lost the subtle 3D parallax effect on him. I needed to substitute animation for parallax. With such a short scene no one will miss the 3d effect. The woman and screaming skeletons all have the parallax effect.