Week one blog

Here in my first entry is the concept artwork for my pitched film, Desert Dash. This idea followed two

desert lizards as they 'wind-surfed' through the desert in a race against one another. They would travel past some predatory creatures who would antagonise them throughout the rest of the race, pursuing them in hopes of an easy dinner. I wanted to animate a race so that i could address a weakness in my animation technique. Some of my animation could be a lot more snappy (pop a lot more) and a race sequence would force quick, dynamic animation.

I was lucky enough to have my film shortlisted along with 13 others. Unfortunately I did not have as much talent as interested as I would have liked. I felt it would be better to dedicate myself to the projects I had voted for instead rather than try to do the majority of my idea alone without a core team.

The artwork included in this entry includes front and back profiles of the main characters Emile, Russo, the Armadillos, desert biker scorpion and the snake. These pictures were drawn in mechanical pencil first then scanned in and coloured in Macromedia Flash 2004. I also had 13 storyboards pencilled ready to be worked on and a couple of sketches for displays and vehicle designs. The character designs are based on real animals.

Cutaway from behind Emile's neck frill/poncho (which would have doubled as a paracute in the film when the two lizards and their armadillo buddies escape the two antagonists.)

I had planned to outfit and texture the armadillos with various racing decals like Formula one and nascar racing cars. The armadillos would curl up around an axle to become the wheels of the lizards racing vehicles.

The scorpion would essentially have acted as a vehicle himself. As a power character he would have punched through scenery and taken shortcuts the lizards would not be able to take in their wind powered boards. The snake would have coiled around the scorpions tail and hung down from there, occasionally tugging on it to get the scorpion to speed up - much like a retro steam train operator. Of all these designs, the snake is my least favourite. I was not keen on it's colour scheme and hoped a team effort would have led to a decent redesign.

Here is a scale comparison of all the characters (above). Basic storyboards (below).

James Lawrance, Week 1 Blog