Week Four Update

This week I spent the majority of my time pondering over my essay topics and storyboarding. I completed the remaining four storyboards for Kyle and then completed roughly 70 storyboards for Adam. I was given until the end of term to complete them but I thought the earlier the better. Now i have more time to spend on other concept artwork and research.

The storyboards are all mechanical pencil on paper. Kyle storyboards are, as before, more graphic and comic like than Adams. This befits the style of Kyles story/film. Adam's storyboards are all relatively the same as his thumbnails bar a few. These few I changed the angles and perpsective of the shot to better fit the film.

Kyle Elliot - Aspiration Point

Adam Smith - War in Wunderland

There is one storyboard missing currently. This will be added at a later date.

Week Three blog

This week has mostly been a follow-up week to work I have previously done. I spent some of my time on model sheets and the rest on thumbnailing and storyboarding. In terms of finished 'product' for my folders I have not produced as much as before, but I have been working on my essay plans for my two essay units as well.

In week two I had the oppotunity to experiment with colour with some colour concept designs for Ash's cafe characters. I felt that by using pastel colours it enhanced the rustic look of the elderly. They certainly wouldn't be wearing neons at that age! (unless they were Merlin from Disney's Sword in the Stone, hip beyond his years in bright orange bermuda shorts). This week I have gone back to drafting sketches using pencil (which decided to die on me - again - for the third time. Curse you Pentel!).

Freelance Work

I have freelanced out a little bit this week as Adam still did not need any current help with War in Wunderland. I did some character drafts considering shape and size for Jonathan Pryce's Aztec Escape, and a simple character study of a little girl for Asa Wilkman's The Day that I Died. These are both shown below.

I originally had thought of bats hung upside down mocking the intrepid explorers entering the Aztec temple in Aztec Escape. The idea of the lad's away from the wives having a chin-wag over the 'sporting event' of choice (i.e. seeing humans attempt to navigate all the temple traps successfully) sounded fantastic. Looking back on the designs though they are all a little too flat and have no shape to them, bar the bottom right one. This character caught Jono's eye but he decided that he did not want bats to be the main characters. Looking down the list of acceptable alternatives I chose frogs instead (below):-

These designs are far more fun and varied than the ones above. I think the charm lies in the bulging eyes. There is plenty of scope for funny gags, expressions and animation in a character with eyes like that. I still kept a couple of fat body shapes in there to juxtapose the tiny, more wirey ones. My favourites are the top three. I think these work quite well together as a whole but the scale from large to lazy to small using pretty much the same character idea interests me. The odd shape of the right hand frog is quite comic. I do not know how Jono plans to proceed with the dialogue and animation in the film but I would hope he has the frogs zap a couple of flies here and there with their extendable tongues (fast food anyone?). This is, of course, if he decides to use frogs at all! I have yet to hear whether or not these designs will be used. As with the bats, this picture was drawn in mechanical pencil.

The Day that I Died is a poetic story of tragedy turned to happiness when a girl dies and becomes reborn through death to a better place. The real world is colour drained and almost lifeless - mirroring the little girl who is close to death - but the afterlife is everything she wants it to be, colourful and exciting (this is my understanding of the film - quite like Corpse Bride in terms of colour). Wheni drafted up the sketch I had completely free reign over design and materials used. It simply had to be a little girl on Death's door (so to speak). I drew two pictures of the same girl, one in hospital garb with an I.V. and one in a summer dress. The first girl is the girl near death, she has dark circles around her eyes and she is bald from all the treatments she has recieved to cure her illness. I had her hunched over to show her phsyical frailty. The I.V. is oversized to emphasize just how small and young she is. The Grim Reaper in the shadow was something I added to literally say - "you are about to die". The second girl has all her hair and a beaming smile. She is far more open and expressive in body language showing she is perfectly alright (albeit dead) in the afterlife. I have no idea what the afterlife looks like so swirly clouds sufficed for this early draft. This picture was drawn in mechanical pencil. I do not know as yet if any of these ideas have been chosen, but to this point i have not had any follow up talks about them.

Groups - Week 3

As mentioned before there was little work to be done on some of the groups I am involved in so i freelanced out a little bit. Here is the update for the main four groups (and the synopsis I missed last week for my fourth group):-

War in Wunderland: Adam told me this week that the storyboard artist he had planned has dropped out last minute so I snapped that job up with a big smile on my face! I have planned to begin these storyboards this week coming (monday onward) to be finished within two weeks, I hope. The reasoning behind the long turnaround is that I am working on the boards on my own with all my other work on top. There are a lot of reference thumbnails so it is going to be time consuming. Adam has given me to the end of term to complete these but I want to get them done sooner so whoever works on the animatic can start working on timing. More updates on this part of the project next week.

Cafe de B...: Ash finalised three character designs this week. He was happy with the old man and the two coffee shop employees. He had said previously that he was less keen on the old woman and i did change the eyes as asked but it still was not what he was looking for - which is fair enough. Three out of four isn't bad is it?! The next step was to complete the model sheets for the old man and coffee employees (see below). These model sheets were completed on Macromedia Flash 2004 and they all share the same hand template. On one of the old man's model sheets there is a hand template that can be copied and modelled separately. By reapplying textures to the same model hand this will save Ash time modelling and rigging/weighting.

The same re-texturing idea can be applied to the coffee employees bodies - which are essentially the same. The normal employee can be textured with normal trousers and shoes as the rock/goth employee can be textured with jeans and converse sneakers. The red highlight on the old man is designed to allow the modellers to model him with or without his blazer jacket. I was not sure whether he was going to have it on in the cafe or whether it would be hung up on a rack. Other than these model sheets I have not been asked to do anything more for Ash at this time.

The Stamp Collector: Becca has yet to task me any jobs so I have concentrated on other concept areas this week.

Aspiration Point: This story was omitted from last weeks blog as I completely forgot the title! Aspiration Point, a Kyle Elliot story, follows a young boy and his passion for fishing. Set in a fantasy realm where humans hate sentient robots (much like the end hours of I, Robot) the boy is harrassed by a young inquisitive machine who is actually much better at fishing than him. The two eventually land themselves in a scuffle with a wild beast/machine. When they exit the skirmish alive it is as friends. What interested me about this story was the strong visual artwork that accompanied the pitch (very heavily influenced by Manga Japanime etc, which is a very distinguishable style) and the underlying racist storyline. Whether or not it is intentional, the story shows a young white boy constantly ignoring and alienating the other young 'boy'. This alienation and prejudice becomes discrimination when the white boy throws mud at the other. The white boy then gets his come-uppance in the form of someone or something much larger and stronger than he. Before he is squashed the other 'boy' intervenes and together the two save themselves from the threat. The heart behind intervening even after he had mud thrown in his face really appealed to me. The overt story of acceptance and friendship and the subtle reference to racial equality shows this story has really been thought about strongly.

Since last week I had drafted an idea for a wild mecha beast, which I then re-drew this week. The original was a warthog - Pumbaa from Lion King meets Lord of the Flies - with rat teeth. Not incredibly scary but this is after all an all ages film.

The second design is far more scary. Kyle wanted the beast to be a wild machine, so here we have a wild mechanical wolf complete with chest cavity power source and piston driven legs. Neither of these two designs have been confirmed as yet.

I thumbnailed the middle sequence of the film, Kyle took the end fight sequence and Rob Evans took the beginning fishing sequence. My thumbnails are shown below: -

These thumbnails were then drafted into first stage storyboards. By this I mean that the ideas are still lose and succeptable to change as the story develops and progresses. I deliberately did not conform to the conventional picture in a box storyboard formula for two reasons. 1) Kyle's attention to detail is insane. There is no way i am going to draw that much into the storyboards one after another and so on. A lot of the backgrounds have been left out so they can be added later digitally when they are finalised. What is important I think is that the characters be shown doing or looking the way they should at the time they should be. This helps the animator with poses and the backgrounds can be added afterward. 2) the style of the story and the artwork begs for more dynamic and interesting boards. The artwork lends itself so well to comic art that the boards would look far more interesting as a storyboarded comic so to speak. These are all shown below (with the exception of the final few pictures as the beast has yet to be finalised. I represented it as a giant american hard-gum in the thumbnails but for storyboards the likeness should be more accurate): -

Finally, here are some sketches that didn't make it into the first week or second week blog due to neglegence on my part (I misplaced them). I found them though so here they are!

The six above pages are all the original concept sketches for the old people and coffee employees for Ash Reemul's Cafe de B... idea. I did not just jump straight into one drawing for all the ideas I really did work on it honest! Ash picked out the ones he liked and then I went from there. Little arrows or stars mark the preferred designs of the time.

Week Two Blog

Groups

I have associated myself primarily with four group projects. My primary group project is There's a war in Wunderland, directed by Adam Smith. I was particularily interested in the style of this film, and excited by the prospect of woring on a project that may be linked to one of my favourite bands - Less Than Jake. This project, in my mind, is more like an industry project as we are producing a video musically scored by the band (hopefully). The 2D animated graphics on 3D models suits me perfectly as i wanted to work on 2D projects as well as 3D. I will be working alongside both Adam and Caspar T.Turner on this project.

Cafe de B... by Ash Reemul is a fantastic showreel short which includes comedy and a moral. The idea of the characters being opposites really interested me, there was plenty of scope for varied animation between the large woman and lanky man. I hope to work on concept design for ash.

The Stamp Collector by Becca Chandler interested me because she wanted to work on a 2D project like me. Unfortunately because not many people in our year want to produce an entirely 2D film, she has had to make it in 3D instead. The story really swayed me to work on it as my idea had been fast paced and dynamic where Becca's was more character driven and emotive. I hope to help part-time with concept, modelling and animation.

Group Roles

There's a war in Wunderland: Adam had already completed a lot of concept work on this project so I hope to work primarily on texturing, modelling and animating. I had been set the task of researching the buildings of San Fransisco, where the film is set. This research would be used to help design our 2D buildings. I also drafted some concept designs for robot textures. These were completed in mechanical pencil but if any are chosen i will colour them and begin work on the animated textures.

Cafe de B...: I hope to help Ash throughout the concept process form design to storyboarding. This week I completed some alternate character designs for the elderly man and woman as well as the young coffee shop staff. These designs were drafted in mechanical pencil before I scanned them and coloured them in Macromedia Flash 2004. Unlike my concept designs for Desert Dash, these drawings have outlines around the colour fill. I have been in contact with Ash over the weekend and he is happy for me to draft some model sheets for the old man and the coffee shop staff. He was not as keen on the design of the old woman.

The Stamp Collector: I hope to work on this project from concept through the animation stage. This week I was set the task of researching any element that may be useful to the film. I looked at Bahamas beaches and beach shacks for the environment during the end segment of the film. I also discussed the structure of the story and how it may be shown throughout the 2 minute time constraint. One comment I thought was quite important was that the film is driven by two characters and the collector spends a lot of the film chasing after the stamp before he reaches the girl at the end. I felt that there should be less chase and more character interraction. I asked to be told if anything else was needed of me but to this point I have not had any follow up conversations on the subject.