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

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

Colour Tree

Bambi has been recently playing about with colour bleeding and ink staining to try and get used to the way it flows and works.  She's going to be doing all the fancy After Effects trickery with colour in post so all the research she does now will pay off for when that part comes around.  

So, we have this one stunning scene we're very excited about getting in the animation.  It's with the kids in the playground and they're on a roundabout under this big, white cherry blossom tree.  As they spin the colour bleeds from the boy and cascades upwards into the leaves of the tree turning them pink.  Bambi's been playing about with some colour and concept art for the tree and came up with a really cool drawing:

I am so excited for this scene, it's going to be absolutely stunning.  We'll hopefully get more colour concepts up soon!

- Lynne

Inspiration Boards

Sooooo I'm going to inundate you with all of our moodboards to date.  There's a lot on colour, ink, character influence, general influence, environment influence and overall styles we like.  We've made a massive moodboard for our wall which incorporates most of these, and I've filled my sketchbooks with all the characters we like too.  It's all slowly coming together!

- 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