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.

Sketches

Here are a few graphic drawings that i have done for Jamie to help him with modelling the town and the playpark. This will be used for the opening fly through scene.

Quick Tests

Here is me doing another crazy experiments with the colour and saturation of the backgrounds. I tried to take a bit of inspiration from the Birdbox animations in the middle picture. And just played about with the saturation on the first one to get a dirty grimy feel to it.

Birdbox Inspirations

Right we have been looking at a few of the Birdbox animations, we just love how short and simplistic they are, yet they seem to work so well even though they are so sketchy and quick paced.

Sketchbook Work

Here is a few sketchbook pages of research and what i have been working on over the summer and the start of the semester. 

Animatic Scenes to Date

Here is a wee compilation of all the scenes I've managed to draw in the last two and a bit weeks.  Bambi, our editor, has the complete animatic file with the rest of the boards and what not, but she has been sensible and decided to enjoy this unnaturally lovely sunshine we're having today by not being inside.  Our most complete animatic has to be ready for our peer review on Monday so it'll be up on our film blog when it's ready.

x L

Animatic See-Saw Third Revise

Okay, still working on our rough animatic.  Peer review is next Monday so I really have a shipload to get done before then.  This is my current revise of the girl on the see-saw scene.  Just away to start on the close up which follows directly after this clip, then onto her storming offscreen.  

Got three scenes left to sketch up before Monday and three characters to design and turn, and maybe have a look at colouring the boy.  Too much to do and not enough hours in the day.  The Beatles had it good with their 8 day weeks.

x L

More Animatic Clips

Just been continuing on from last week trying to time out the boards and get a wee semblance of an animatic on the go.  Got some lovely feedback from my very observant classmate Fraser Murdoch on my post with the wee girl on the see-saw.  With his advice, coupled with the advice of my director, I've played about with the clip and come up with this:

The bear is more obviously a useless see-saw companion, and I don't have to worry about timing a see-saw jump, so it's all much better.  There is still more to add but it will need to be tomorrow.  I've also been working on the scene where the girl goes to the bush and confronts the boy about hurting her teddy.  The boy hurting the teddy scene is still to be done, it comes directly after the girl on the see-saw scene hence why I haven't started it yet, but it will all make sense soon.

Originally we were going to have the boy hiding in the bush and when the girl confronts him he smiles and jovially 'tags' her before running off. The girl, still being mad, chases after him, but in them playing chase they eventually become friends.  I, apparently because I am in a 'soppy mood' today, suggested we make it a bit more light-hearted and instead of hitting her he kisses her on the cheek (like in kiss-chase) and the print he leaves on her face will stain her cheeks to look like she's blushing.

So yes, enjoy!  Again, any and all feedback would be very much welcome!  More to come soon.

x L

Girl on Seesaw

Or teeter-tot as they seem to call them in America (crazy Americans).  As a part of our new story, and so boards and animatic, we felt our little female protagonist would appear more lonelier if we put her and her wee teddy bear companion on a see-saw rather than a swing.  A swing can be played on quite happily by one person but a see-saw really does require two, and as we want to show the audience she has no friend to play with, a see-saw became our replacement.  Her loneliness becomes immediately apparent when we see that the bear makes a terrible see-saw partner, and it gives an understanding to her reaction to the boy when she sees him.  She is lonely and wants a friend, and he is lost and in need of a friendly face.  

I've been boarding and scheduling away these last few days (last week of course, the weekend was lost to far too much television and far too little dissertation) and have managed to cobble together the first wee clip of her and her bear on the see-saw.  There is something completely and utterly wrong with the timing somewhere but I've been looking at it too long to see exactly what.  

Feedback would be very, very welcome if anyone would care to give me some pointers.  I'll hopefully have more of a sequence tomorrow so I will try my best to upload that too if I can.

Enjoy! 

x L

Boy Jump

And we're back!  After a summer of far too much inactivity my group and I are finally back in the studio and back working on our film!  So far we've scrapped everything we worked on last semester and started for the third (and hopefully final) time working out our story and roughly boarding some scenes together.  I have started taking some of the rough ideas onto the computer and trying to time them out digitally.  

I have started with our simplest scene, which is the wee Boy jumping scared into a bush (or shrub as I am being asked to call it as 'bush' is apparently too lewd a word to say aloud).  We're still working on what might possibly be in the background so these are still rough too.  We're very much trying to work to the guidelines of the fabulous Mr. Bruce Block, playing with deep and flat spaces, etc, but are worried the film is becoming far too flat overall, so this scene may change to a slightly different perspective over time.

Anyway, it's only day three and it's not much to begin with but at least it's a start.  Expect more updates very soon, and please, please feel free to leave feedback as it is very much needed and appreciated!

x L