COVID Apes Animation

I animated this shot while my animation students worked on their assignment. I thought it would be good for them to see a shot develop from start to finish. I finished (animated and painted) the foreground ape and the ape poking the iPhone screen by the end of class.

I only animated the up swing of the ape holding the bone weapon. This is only the lower third of the painting, and the camera pans up to a ballet dancer with wings who is floating effortlessly. The shot opens with a quick zoom transition effect, so I thought I should hold the apes for a moment before they started to move. However when I brought that timed render into Premiere Pro I found that the animation was lost as the camera panned upwards.

I had to change all the ape animation to begin from the start of the shot so the animation could be seen. Then I ran into the situation that the upraised bone was visible as a held cell for a moment. I considered animating the down swing, but then decided instead to zoom in a bit more into the ballet dancer until the bone was out of the shot.