Colour Chart

Hello Suba here! Here is a colour chart for the film. The darkest colour are the outlines and the darkest reds are representing the little boy so that he will still stand out in amongst all of the pinks and grey shades of the environments.

Poster That Cannot Be Used

Had a doss idea for a poster today, but one that totally cannot be used, which I am unhappy about.  Still made it though, and I'm putting it up on here:

I know it's a long way off but things like posters are still at the back of my mind.  Had an interesting convo with Kieran about it, and he got me onto a fellow called Matt Owen (check out his whole blog, it's wonderful!) who makes these AMAZING minimalist film posters.  Our favourites are the ones which are sort of 'in the know' posters, where you need to have seen the film, or have heard the plot, to fully appreciate the poster.  Like these:

Cool, eh?  Kieran suggested we do something to subliminally suggest that it's in the washing machine, but without giving the plot away.  Thought it was a great idea.  If we could come up with something as awesome as one of these I was be so chuffed! 

Anyway, just a thought.  Back to dopesheeting :( 

x L

Town Design

I know the plan is a bit dodgy I should have really moved my light box! However here is the completed town technical drawing which I shall be passing over to Jamie to build in Maya.

Production Chart

Just a quick post for posterities sake.  Here is our Production Chart.  Excitement ensues.

x L

Our Most Up-To-Date Animatic YET

So we've finished the boards and have them proudly displayed above the Director's desk:

They loom over us as a giant reminder of all the work we still have to do.  In finishing the boards I've since been able to finalise the animatic too, making the last 30 seconds a lot more clearer than we had on the post-it boards.  Now it actually makes sense.  The timing's had to change a wee bit too, it was flying through the final reveal just a bit too quick for my liking.  Here is what we gots now:

Please let us know what you think.  The intro may be getting looked at... in fact, it will be getting looked at 'cause we've redesigned the town a bit, so please bear that in mind, the fly through will be better, or at the very least different.  We're still sitting at just one second under two minutes, so it's a very manageable piece.  Suba's working on our first layout as I type so doping and animating will be beginning forthwith! Hurrah!  

Again, please let us know what you think!  Any feedback is good feedback.

x L

Final Storyboards

Been working on them since last Monday, and I think (after ten or so months of rewrites) we've finally settled on the story!  Now it's onto making a Production Chart, and then Layouts next week with Suba.  The only thing missing from these boards are the SFX notes and working out the timing - which I did actually sit and work out, but managed to work out wrong the first time round.  They will get added in later, when I get that all reorganised and fixed.

Anyway, enjoy!  Hope they make sense.

x L

Layouts

This week I am trying to sort out layouts especially with the see saw and opening shot. So here are a few things I have been working on, just experiment with the angles and the way the shot should look.

Animatic Rewrite

Just a wee catch up after my last post on Friday.  Finished tweaking the new revise of the animatic today so storyboarding can continue tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll get them done for our production meeting at 3pm, but that may be a bit of a push, especially at it's our Background Artist's 21st birthday today coupled with Hallowe'en.  We'll be lucky if we're up tomorrow by 3pm...  But anyhow, here's how it's looking so far:

Please let me know what you think, all feedback would very much be appreciated!

x L

Layouts and Boards 01

So this week Suba and I were going to try and sit down and work out our layouts for the animation.  We got ourselves a copy of Mark T. Byrne's "The Art of Layout and Storyboarding" and had a sit down with our resident storyboard professional Wayne Thomas who taught us the basics of layouts, using examples from his time as a boarder on SuperTed.  With all our notes we got to work, Suba went ahead and started working out how exactly she wants to create the environment fly-through at the beginning of the animation, whilst I found myself taking about five steps backwards in order to make one step forward.  

In order for me to start layouts, I need to work out a production chart, and in order to do that I need to work out exactly how many scenes and shots we have, and in order to that I need to finalise the boards, and in doing the boards I've reworked a section of the story to make it read better.  So I am currently in the middle of boarding, production charting, re-animaticing and I'm still mid-dog run cycle.  So many projects!

Anyhow, this is how we're looking on the new story rewrite:

We've flipped the girl so that she's the one to be hit by the ball.  In doing this it saves me a lot of animation but we still get the same idea across.  Now she no longer has to storm off the full length of the scene, I no longer need to flip a bear through the air into her face and she no longer carries her teddy with her to the bush where the boy's hiding.  The bear falling off the see-saw makes more sense realistically and feels just as sad; we still feel the girls loneliness at not having a real see-saw companion and it creates empathy for the girl a lot quicker than how we previously had it written.  Best of all, the whole scene is shorter, shaving about eight and a half seconds off of our animation in total.  

Because of this change though, I need to go back and tweak a whole bunch of other things on the animatic, which's going to set me back another day or so.  I'll get it all blogged up when it's completed next week, and I'll upload the boards too when they're all reworked and done.

Till then!

 x L

Research for Layouts

This week me and Lynne are figuring out the layouts for the animation, so I have been figuring out levels and how to actually do layouts correctly. So here is just a few little sketches...

Dog Run Cycles - Attempt 01

Animal run cycles - YEY!  Oh my, all the fun we can have when we give something four legs.  Working out a dog run cycle has been a challenge and a half, but I have learned so much today it has definitely been worth all the brain strain.

Started off by researching roughly how a dog's leg works, and what sort of basic shapes and movements I would need to tackle my own run cycle.  I've been using a wee supplement from ImagineFX on Anatomy, which I highly recommend everyone and anyone getting if you are interested in exactly how and why humans and animals move and look the way they do.  It's so in depth and explained everything to me perfectly.  I stole some of their drawings as notes and pinned them up behind my lightbox for reference, then got under way.

I've also enlisted the help of an old college buddy of mine, and second year animator Tara, who is a genius when it comes to animal cycles and, to be fair, animal art in general.  I went to her for advice on this dog cycle and twenty minutes later she's roughed out and line tested a seven frame cycle for me as a guide!

Legend.

So with my guide and anatomy notes I got to work and created this:

Which you can see has only two of it's four legs in place.  Then I added the final two legs, cleaned-up a wee bit and got this:

Not bad for a first attempt, don't you think?  Well, at the very least I have impressed myself.  I can see what needs changed and obviously there's still a lot to be added, but for a generic attempt at a four-legged run cycle I am very happy with today's work.  

This run cycle is also going to be used for clean-up tests when it's finished.  I'm hoping to try and work out exactly how I want it done, and ensure I get the look that I want with my final frames.  All in good time though, I still need to add ears to this wee furball yet.  That's going to be all the fun.

x L

Size Comparison

Suba here! Just thought I would give you an example of what sizes . I have been looking into the environment and where everything should go and I thought if I used the size of the character it would help me a lot to design the play park. 

Play Park Concept

Hello! Since I have sort of worked out the colour and style I have just been trying out a bit of concept artwork. So here is a little example what the final outcome may look like.

Our Little Village

Suba here..thought i would post a little rough drawing of the style that I am heading towards. Everything is slowly coming together which I am very happy about :)

Production Schedules

Here's how we're hoping to plan out the next eight months.  This very may well change, hopefully not, but we are still very unsure of our abilities and with no previous experience to go on, this is our best gauge of time.  The schedules are divided up into our four separate areas of expertise, mine and Suba's 2D section, Jamie's 3D side and Bambi's editing and comping.  I will update any changes that get made as they happen, but hopefully this is a plan we can stick too.

x L

Blossom Tree

Suba here...again! Just did a drawing of the blossom tree, so I am thinking of defiantly using this style for the backgrounds, as i don't want it to look too abstract, because the characters would not really fit in to that sort of environment.

Peer Review Animatic

Had our peer review this past Monday (which I will update more on in another blog post soon) which we had been working our asses off to get some form of animatic ready for.  This is the animatic that we showed on the day.  Apologies in advance for the roughness of some of the boards.  The scribbles make sense to us, but not so much other people it seems.  This will rectified in due course.

Post peer review I added in some of the colour bleeding and fixed and finished the dog scenes:

More news to come soon so stay tuned! 

x L

Playpark Ideas

This is a drawing of what the playpark is beginning to look like just now. With the textures trees and playground equipment.

Cloud Examples

I have recently looked in to making the clouds look as though they were bubbles or soap suds. And give the sky a liquid effect. So this is just a wee example of what i was thinking of doing. 

The Town Scene

This is a rough wee photoshop drawing of what the town may end up looking like. We are going for an old english countryside town idea. So i did a lot of research on small villages to help me complete this sketch.