Colour Schemes

I've now started to think about the colour scheme within my film. The actual Kakapo itself is green and yellow, and I like the idea of the bird being green but solid green. I could try and make it completely accurate, but I think it would go against the cartoony style of the film to do so. The solid green colour fits in better and will make the painting stage a lot simpler.

Here are some variations on the colour scheme. I knew that the main body would be a paler, almost leafy green, while the Kakapo's tail would be bluer and more vibrant. The beak and legs will definately be yellow, probably a darker yellow, and the goggles would be a brown or grey colour. I thought that the goggles would be a colour that would fit in more with the colour scheme of everything else, while the Kakapo's colour scheme would be strikingly different. Therefore everything else in the film will be shades of grey, brown and yellow.These are what I think will be the final colours for the Kakapo. I think the difference between tail and body is distinct but without looking like the tail shouldn't be attached to the body. I also decided that the beak and legs would be a paler colour, as it seemed to fit the colour scheme better.

I then moved onto the Owl character. I went through various ideas and styles for the Owl. I felt the grey colours at the top didn't look enough like an Owl, and looked more like a falcon. Although this may be due to the image I chose to colour. I liked the patterned designs, but they're not practical for colouring, especially if I have other people doing it for me, as I am planning to do.

In the end I chose a colour scheme similar to that of the Snowy Owl. My reason for this is because I feel that the Snowy Owl has the more pug faced look to it out of all the Owls. Also, it was a picture of a snowy Owl I originally based my owl design off in the first place.

The Crane character will get his colour scheme at a later date, as I'm still unhappy with his design.

Storyboard Draft

I've now produced my first storyboard, which I'm not entirely happy with. The story flows and is understandable but a lot of the camera positions are repetitive and bland, and I shall change them on further iterations of the storyboard.

The short opens on a sign that reads 'Flight School' we then cut to a cliff where the Crane teacher is over-seeing a random bird (most likely a Pigeon) as it jumps off the cliff and takes flight. Seeing the bird's success, the Crane looks at his book and ticks them off. He then turns the page and comes to the next student - the Kakapo. He gestures to the Kakapo, and the Kakapo looks surprised and worried.The Kakapo quickly checks to make sure the Crane isn't pointing at anyone else, and then decides that he's gonna do a runner. However, he doesn't look where he's going and runs face first into the Owl. The Owl glares at the Kakapo threateningly, and the Kakapo becomes scared. He does an about turn and legs it towards the cliff in fear.
The Crane, meanwhile, has become distracted by something in his book. After reading the entry on the Kakapo properly, he realises that the Kakapo is a flightless bird. He yells after the Kakapo, trying to stop him, but is too late. The Kakapo jumps off the cliff, and seems to have taken flight...

...except he hasn't, and the Kakapo plummets towards the ground. The Crane flinches in response to what we presume is a rather unpleasant end for the poor Kakapo. He then dutifully crosses out the Kakapo's 'Flightless' status, and replaces it with 'Extinct'. Barely taking a moment to mourn, the Crane indicates that is now the Owl's turn. We fade out as the Owl prepares to jump also.

The story is coming into place now, however I'm disliking the current ending. I think it will be better if after the Crane writes 'Extinct', he turns the page (as he did previously for the Pigeon) and we get the credits instead. I think this will make the credits more organic to the film also.

On top of that, there are a few aesthetic changes that could be made. Dave suggested that the Owl be facing away from the Kakapo and scares him by turning his head around 360 to glare at him a la the Exorcist. I really like that idea, and may incorporate it.

Character Design Process

I did say I'd update later, and I'm staying true to my word with an update! Life's exciting that way.


Anyway, initially I had conceived a film over the summer about a small penguin who becomes bored with swimming every day and admires how the birds can do all these cool aerial twists and decides he wants to fly. He would then build himself a big pair of wings, and attempt to fly. He fails and falls into the water, much to the amusement of the seagulls he was watching. However, under water he sees the fish performing similar movements to that the seagulls were. He becomes content with swimming, and joins the fish in their happy swimming dance.


This idea, however, needed to be changed and trimmed for multiple reasons. The plot was scattered (where did he get the material to build the wings?) and would have been ALOT of work for me to do. However, I had decided by this point that the film would be a 2D piece, however, the animation would all be drawn straight into Photoshop/ToonBoom using a Wacom Tablet and that my set would be CGI (most likely toon shaded)


After learning that the we could not do long films and instead could do a showreel or a vignette, I opted to do a vignette. I decided to take the bare bones of my story - a penguin tries to fly and fails - and simply animate that. The piece would be a character study of him preparing to jump, running, jumping and falling. I began to do some initially sketches of the character to get some of the ideas clear in my head.


I presented the idea to the rest of my year and my tutors, and the point was raised that penguins in animation are very common and slightly overdone. I was recommended to change the penguin into a different type of bird or animal. I decided that the point was valid, and that I wanted my vignette to stand out and that doing 'yet another penguin film' would hurt it badly. Therefore, I did some research, and began designing several characters using flightless birds and animals which have variations that can fly (flying squirrels, flying frogs, etc)

From the animals I designed, I felt the strongest and most interesting design was that of the Kakapo. The Kakapo is a small flightless parrot that lives in New Zealand. I did some research on the bird, and also found some images of the bird so that I could do some life drawing per say of the bird to research it and understand it's look a bit better. I then went further and began refining the Kakapo's design.



After deciding upon the main character, I devised a rough story based on my original penguin story. The Kakapo would try to fly by jumping out of a tree, but fails and landed in some way. I lacked an end to my story, and when I presented it the tutors again, I was given the suggestion of a flight school. This idea inspired me and the story became that the Kakakpo had somehow ended up in a flying school, and was trying to leave but was forced to jump off a cliff and try to fly. The a story was still rough in my head, but I decided that I needed at least two more characters - a teacher and another character in the line behind the Kakapo that would probably be more physically intimidating.



For the teacher, I decided that I would go with a Crane. I personally see teacher's in my mind's eye as being long, tall thin men. Sort of lanky and all bones. I thought the Crane matched this quite well, as well as providing a contrast to the Kakapo.



For the character behind the Kakapo in the line, I chose the owl. I chose the owl for several reasons. Firstly the Kakapo is also known as 'The Owl Parrot' and I thought it'd be fun to reference that. I also felt that Owl's are consistently portrayed in animation as wise old kindly creatures. I've never quite understood this as to me owl's look like the hard guys of the forest. The sort of birds that would head butt you looking at you a bit funny. So I decided my owl would be a big hulking thug who defied usual conventions with the bird.


The character designs still need to be refined, but this is as far as I have gotten. I think I may move onto creating a character sheet for the Kakapo, whose design seems to be fairly solid now. However, I feel the owl and stork need further designing, as do other students at the school who will be in the background.

Back to the sketchpad...

Getting started

Hey there, I'm James and this is a blog I've made for the purpose of tracking my work and progress during my final third year project. I'll post more stuff later, but for now, here's a colour concept I put together on Tuesday.