Girl Development

Thought I better start looking at characters that are not the mother for a change.  We kinda always figured, from really early on, that the mother and daughter would be the spit of one other, so that when I finally got the mother nailed (weeeeeey), the daughter would be really easy to design.  

We were thinking the kids are maybe about 7-8ish, so I've been trying a couple different designs in an attempt to make her stereotypically childlike.  Proved a lot more difficult than I thought, and I'm actually thinking that her original design makes her look the youngest.  When I tried adding alicebands and bows to her hair it simply made her look older, which's weird.  I am contemplating freckles though... they were about the only think I was really happy with, but they could be an actual nightmare to animate.  We'll see.  Next up, Boy developments.

- Lynne

3D Kitchen Environment

So, we decided incredibly early on that the environment inside the washing machine was going to be only 2D, whereas the outside the washing machine world will be all photo-realistic 3D.  We thought it's be nice to create these two contrasting world to really hit-home that the washing machine world is make-believe or imagined, while the other is reality. 

Our resident 3D expert, Jamie Bell, is taking charge of the entirety of the 3D world, including modelling the kitchen with all it's utensils and props, the Mum and the Girl (who we're thinking of naming Lenor and Surf after, obviously, the washing powder brands), an outside-the-window world of the playground and possible some washing hanging out on the line.  He's gonna have all the fun in the world getting all that made AND animating the Mum, the girl, the washing machine, the washing on the line and the camera.  Good luck JB.

Anyway, here's some scans from his R&D sketchbook of his work so far.  Like I was saying, we've been working purely on storyboards this last wee while so a lot of development work has been put on hold.  Hopefully we'll be back to it once the boards are handed in on the 7th March.

- Lynne

Street View

Staying with the whole Dr. Seuss vibe, and the fact that the 2D animation is now taking place in the mind of the little girl, we've decided to make the street more organic and bendy and curvy and very, very childlike.  Suba's drew out this street view today as an example of the new, curvaceous environment and how it affects the buildings, etc.

During the group meeting we had today we also thought it would be cool to have the backgrounds quite plain to begin with, and as the colour spreads through the environment it will add detail, such as brick work in the walls or leaves on the trees.  Kat Bambi is playing around with all the AE colour bleeding so hopefully she'll get back to us as to whether this will be possible or not.  Think she's going to be filming colour tests for our intro sequence tomorrow so we'll maybe have some of her stuff to put up soon.

Exciting!

- Lynne

Mum Debate

Right, I'm really having to get down to actually choosing how the Mum is going to look in this animation, and I have her whittled down to a couple different ideas.  Within our group, however,  I'm getting a lot of differing opinions as to which one everyone likes/dislikes, etc, so I'm going to throw her out there and see what everyone else thinks.

First off, should she be a wee stout sort of woman (very typical household Mum stereotype) or long and slender (based on my actually Mother, who is 5'10 and slim):

Secondly, what's the general consensus on the lack of detail for feet and facial expressions?  The characters, so far, are all noseless, have only pupils for eyes, and walk with stumps for legs.  Does this detract from the characters?  It doesn't sound appealing when you read that sentence, but when they're on the page, I find I quite like the style.  It makes them quite doll-like, which I guess is the direction we kinda wanted to go in the first place.

Lastly, how much detail aught to be put in the face?  Some of the guys prefer her without the definition between her face and her hair, whereas some prefer the line there.  I threw in a half/half one too as a compromise, and it annoyingly also works quite well.  

I tried to do a semi-turnaround of the head for the bottom three pictures but failed miserably.  I managed to turn her head slightly but not her hair at all.  That needs to get worked on.

Anyway, these are your options.  Answers on a postcard please.

- Lynne

More Environments (Getting Closer!)

Getting closer to the final design, but still need to play with colour and the layout of the environments.

Inspired by Dr Seuss illustrations but adding my own style.

More Backgrounds

Some more of Susan's beautiful backgrounds!  We're slowly but surely reaching the style that we want for the final environment.  Susan's been doing a lot of research into Dr. Seuss and incorporating his style into her own.  She's coming up with some pretty stunning results that we're all incredibly excited about.  She's currently working on some more finalised pieces just now, so when they're ready we'll get them up for your viewing pleasure.

- Lynne

Moar Potential Mum Drawings

This be what I've been drawing recently yo!  Drawings of Mum first 'cause we kinda figured that once we got her nailed (WEEEEEY) then the wee girl will just be a smaller version.  We like a couple of things from each Mum so might try to blend them together into one big, super Mum.  Don't really know yet either as to how simplistic I'm going to make the body shapes, if that's what we're doing at all.  This is still all very much working progress.

 
Our favourite so far is the one on the bottom left in the first picture, although we really liked the flare-like legs on the Mum in the top right, but felt that she was too sexy for a mother character.  Might give the wee Boy flares instead and give them all a wee seventies feel.  Dunno, we shall see.  Threw in a wee drawing of the girl as well to see how she looks in this new style.  Really starting to like how it's coming along.

Also been playing around with some heads.  Some silly, some serious.  General consensus here is that we like the oval and square, and the rest simply don't work for one reason or another.  Our top likes and dislikes for the Mum's in the first picture are listed here too.  We'll hopefully get them whittled down by next week for rough storyboards, then finalised for final boards a fortnight after that.

Again, please feel free to fire any comments/crits our way.  Every little helps (to quote Tesco).

- Lynne

Early Character Designs

Amongst all of our meetings, reviews, pitches and deadlines I've been trying to get started on some character designs.  I have two for each of the potential characters, aaaaaand they both look exactly the same.  Go figure.  I'm not even that keen on making them look as human as I have, yet I find it quite difficult to diverge away from that style.  I have been, in recent weeks, attempting to broaden my drawing horizon by mimicking the work of other artists - as suggested by the WONDERFUL Steven Silver - and I'm starting to notice it in my work already, which is wonderful!  I'm still a far cry away from what I'm really looking for though, so I maybe I need to look harder at more diverse work and try and break out of the very humanoid-characterisation area I seem to have settled in.  It's still only week three so we'll see how this develops.

- Lynne

Environment Concepts 01

Here we've got some of our resident 2D environmental artist's first concept work for our animation!  Susan's been working on a lot of very different potential designs for the 2D environment (the environment in the washing machine world).  We haven't been making it easy for her tbh with the story changing every other day from war themes to infection stories to happy nice tales of a little boy playing in a playground.  She's also been doing some early colour work, playing about with reds bleeding into pinks, which are looking very, very nice.  We've got a lot of colour experimentation ahead of us so it's good to get started on it now I suppose.

Again, comments and suggestions are more than welcome!

- Lynne