How to wag a tail

How was this done? As usual, by relying on inadequate complexity. 😎 80% of the look comes from the tail.

I used a tail bent to one side as state 1, flipped to the opposite as reference for state 5 (as in, I copied it). Then I moved all anchors to match the state 5. I got somewhat straight, but short tail in the middle. To get state 3, I stretched and rearranged anchors into adequate position. Transition 1-3-5 now looked like a triangle (path transformations always have linear path interpolation), so I stretched and fixed middle states 2 and 4.

Now, that's just the base gray shape. After copy-pasting layers and applying strokes, I added black and white strokes.

I moved black tip, light gray and spots into separate precomp. Expanded colored areas and spots so that they exist outside the tail too. Copy-pasted base contour into the precomp as a reference too. Animated position+rotation for black tip and paths for gray area. Split spots into 3 groups and moved them around. All this for all 5 states.

Back in the main comp, I copy-pasted the base contour again and used it as a mask for the precomp.

While path anchor animation is always linearly interpolated, time interpolation can be adjusted. So I applied same changes to interpolation of all animated parts.

Path animation is actually around 90 degrees. Here it animates around 30 degrees, just to fit into the sticker. I made a rotation cycle with similar time interpolation adjustments and shifted it back and forth until I got a decent cycle that fit into the sticker.

Not sure whether animating 90 deg rotation and reducing it to 30 deg was worth it, but I couldn't really go back. Maybe it made animation look more realistic, with muscles in the tail changing the shape much more than if I made 30 deg from the start.

Animating the right arm required a separate path animation. It's very minor and hard to notice, but I didn't want to compromise the line the artist has drawn.

Standard for NowAndLater stickers

As usual, not only white strokes were required, but extra outer black strokes were removed when splitting the image and then re-added when vectorizing.

And that's how you wag a tail. 😎