Has anyone discussed the scale of Tin Owl with relation to Tin Girl?
I know in the original animatic Tin Owl often perches on Tin Girls shoulder.
Unless we scale Tin Owl down quite a bit I'm not sure this will work.

As an example here are two images I was playing with.
In the first the Tin Owl model is roughly the current size. (Rather large for perching on Tin Girls shoulder)
In the second he's closer to the size as shown in the animatic (Still a little larger comparitively).

The scale really could go either way. Good animators could make it work either way.
Personally I think a small cute Tin Owl would play great in character interaction and appeal.
After all Tin Woodman is Emporer of the Winkies... and now he's been reduced to this... he's already feeling inadequate and fears he won't get the girl. Its no wonder if he's a really little owl.

My greatest concern would be eye contact and interaction with Tin Girl throughout the relevant scenes.
Whatever happens between the two nonverbally could make for great storytelling.
So... obviously I favor a small Tin Owl.

Any thoughts one way or the other?
Has this already been discussed?

Small.

Kewl.

Definitely. Plus I like how he goes from being the tallest to the smallest. I only hope the scale down doesn't break any of the rig.

Scaling the squetch rig shouldn't be a problem, but the facial rig will be massive in comparison to the model, which can't be scaled down.

Hmmm... We need some kind of solution for the FACE rig... It's the size of the controls, isn't it?

The poses are controlled by the distances that the controllers move, so, if you change those distances it will mess that up. They could just use the FACE camera for the controllers and have the character's face open in another window...or there could be a second camera for just the character's face with the present camera for the controls. One tied to the view of the character's face and one independent floating somewhere else.

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EDIT
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Thinking about it more, Tinman has some limits in his face rig that would be affected...unless those are scaled when re-scaling. It's worth a test. Oh, also the body_SQUETCH uses a distance that might be affected.

Here's another option.

Could we use this as an opportunity to demonstrate the ability of A:M Composite (or at least general compositing)? Animate regular size and composite smaller?

Nah... didn't like that idea either.

The reason I say this is that I've seen it work (sorta).
The small Tin Owl above is composited into the scene with Tin Girl. He was rendered regular size and scaled down in post. You can see the eyes don't exactly line up if you look closely. Then again the eyes don't line up on the current size Tin Owl and Tin Girl either.

Obviously it would be better to keep it realative size but... exploring the possibilities here.
You have to agree having the animator perform Tin Owl separately from other scene elements and at a larger size and then compositing in would be quite a task.

Since Tin Owl will be floating and flying around he more than any character might work for such a compositing arrangement.

Maybe we could just set the FACE controls to the side?

Couldn't you just move the controls further behind the head so that they look smaller in the face camera?

Of course all the controls would need to be on the side of the face....

Okay, first, reparent the "FACE Interface - Master" bone and "key Groups" null to be children of the "body_SQUETCH_base" bone. Next, make a new on/off pose. In that pose, scale the "body_SQUETCH_base" bone to whatever size you want. When you turn on the pose, everything works fine...except that the FACE nulls have to be moved using the arrow keys for some reason on my machine (I scaled Tinman to 1% of original size approximately). Makes me think that the "key Groups" null and the "FACE Interface - Master" bone should be parented that way. Anyway, see if that gives you the results you're needing.