Jo's Nut Job Monkey

Jo asked me to do a colour turnaround of a monkey - the main character in her film 'Nut Job'. She provided me with the turnaround and a basic idea of what colours she wanted, and asked me to produce a few variations. I went off, digitally inked and painting the drawings and below are the results of my labour. 

Of the three, I personally prefer number three, although I think five is probably closest to what Jo had originally given me. Anyway, Jo seems happy with what I did, so all in all this was a success!

Another Animatic

I did a tighter version of my animatic yesterday, and decided to upload it. I changed a few scenes, added a few more drawings and put some camera moves 0n some of the shots, so hope you enjoy.

Set Design Again

Well I had a long think about my set design, and at first I decided that I wanted someone else to do my set design. However, after a longer think I decided to grit my teeth and carry on with it, mainly because I wanted to get past my own block when it came to this area.

So to start off, I decided to do a mood board using my own designs and research that I'd collected, to get an idea of what I wanted and how close I was to getting there. Also, I used this as a chance to compare the colour scheme I was using to the usual colour scheme associated with the type of set I was doing. I primarily looked at old Road Runner Cartoons, and the Lion King.

The main conclusions I drew from the mood board were:

• The colour scheme was off - I was using too much yellow and it made everything look somewhat sickly.


• The thorns I was designing didn't actually look like thorns, or looked too big and unrealistic.


• My cliff faces were too smooth and not rocky enough.


• The level of detail in my designs was minimal, and made the set look bland, flat and unrealistic.

Taking these things on board, I spent several hours playing around on Photoshop, painting up a new set design, still using the design Sarah did for me as a base, and the result was this.

I was pretty happy with this, the thorns look better, more like thorns and more importantly, more threatening. The design is a bit too Warner Bros-esque for my liking, but overall I was happy with the design. One thing that does still need to be changed, however, is the design of the tree. It's still too similar the tree that's being used in Matt Evans film, plus it doesn't quite look dead enough to me.

After this, I did another quick sketch to get an idea of the set from a different angle.

Despite the drawing being at what can be generously described as a weird angle, I do like this drawing. It has a nice style to it that I find quite cool. I'm also starting to get a better idea from this of what the floor plan of the film is going to be like.

Finally, I began to work out the top and side view, so that I could start thinking about asking Jenn to model the set for me. I'm aiming to be ready to do that by the end of the week.

So overall, Set Design is back on track and going better now. Still not overly happy about it, but am feeling a bit better about it now. Hopefully, it'll all be sorted by the end of the week, so I can focus on particle effects, sound and my final animatic.

Pigeon and Humming Birds

Hey there

Remember when I said I'd upload the character designs for the Pigeon, Humming Bird and other background characters? Remember when I complete forgot about it until now? No, well nevermind then.

First off we have the design process for the Pigeon. I wanted to make him like the logical opposite to the Kakapo in a lot of ways. His colour is dull and boring and his character is excitable and thrill-seeking. I got the idea after the growth on their beak reminded me of a little kid with a bandage across their nose. I used this as a launching point for the design, which I'm happy with, but if the Pigeon was a more featured character, would probably keep refining.
The Humming Bird required actually very little design, as it came as part of several other designs that I did for background characters. Again, if they featured more prominantly, I would have spent more time on these designs to really refine them.

And with that, that is all my character design process uploaded. There may be a few things here and there that need to be finalised, and if so I will update, but for now, that stage of production is done.

Torvill and Dean for Laura

Hello!

I have been doing more work for other students to go towards my Client Oriented Practice & Team Production unit. First off, Jo Raithby asked me to do some colour work on a turnaround that she provided me with. I shall upload the results of this, after I have shown them to Jo first.

Secondly, Tim Storrow asked me to do a final storyboard for his vignette, which I will start in the near future.

Lastly, following up on a previous post, Laura Tait had asked me to do a few more designs for her film. (which has now changed so that the characters may or may not be used anymore) She requested that I designed the two stars that were to ice skate in her original idea. I used the famous ice skaters Torvill and Dean as a basis for the designs.
Laura also suggested I could do some more alien designs as well. I enjoyed doing this, as it was very free in it's creativity and allowed me to have some very silly fun. Think one of them looks a bit Don Herztfelt-esque now I look at it.



Also, I have begun to ask people for help on my project as well. So far I have:

• Jenn Hanley building my set in Maya
• Tim Storrow has agreed to animate the book pages turning in Maya
• Susan Bell is building a clay model of the Kakapo for me. So I can better visualise the character.
• Sarah Krafft has already helped me on my set design.
• Jo Raithby and Laura Tait have both offered to help in some way, which I suspect will be as colourists. This is an area I expect I will have many more people helping me with as it is the biggest concern for me.
• David Foulston has offered to do some in-betweening for me, which I may take him up on.

Jobs I need filled are:

• I need someone to texture the model in Maya that Jenn will build for me.
• I may need someone to do particle effects for me.
• I may need someone to Matte paint for me.
• I will most likely need someone skilled at After Effects to teach/help me with the final composition .

Animatic Time

Have been working on a new storyboard which I have quickly put together as a roughly timed Animatic. I'm not going to explain what's going on in the animatic, primarily because I feel if the animatic is working then I dont need to explain it. Anyone looking at this, if you could leave a comment if you can't understand what's going on, I'd much appreciate it.

Jump!

More playing around in ToonBoom, first I did a jump to get to grips with the mechanics of jumps.

I then added a little wiggle to the anticipation, after a suggestion from Adam

I also did a very quick 'surprise take' animation.

Starting to get used to ToonBoom now...

Kakapo Walk

I decided to start practising on Toomboom, as well as start to get an idea of how the Kakapo moves. Here I'm trying to get a child like feel into how the Kakapo walks - like a kid kicking up leaves or pretending to tightrope.

Set Design yet again

With my character designs all but finished now, I have no choice but to move onto finalising my set design.

First I worked out a very rough floor plan of what I wanted for the set.

At first I attempted to do some of my own designs, with little success. I also decided to change the sign in the original concept, so that the sign fo the school is hanging from a dead tree. To give over the idea that very little can live in this place.

Seeing that I was struggling with this, Sarah offered to do a concept for me:

I like this concept alot, and so I did a quick photoshop colour job on it. After Dan pointed out that the tree on the cliff was too similar to the set design that Matt has done for his film, I decided to move the tree. The tree's sign is also, for story purposes, inadequete and needs to be reversed to face away from where the camera is in this drawing.

Still not 100% happy with the set design, so more shall follow.

Turnarounds

Hey there, finally got around to doing my character turnarounds. First off we have the turnarounds for the main protagonist, Kakapo.

Then we have Owl.Then I moved onto the Crane, going through various colour pallets along the way.

I finally decided upon this colour scheme.
Then I moved onto other characters. This is Pigeon. He goes in line before Kakapo, he's very energetic and gets into scrapes alot and thus has many bandages and bruises. His design process will be uploaded later.

And hereis Humming Bird, he's in line behind Owl. He's mad in short but may be cut out for various reasons.

Lastly I threw together a height chart, so you can see how tall the characters are in relation to each other.

Something old

Here's a test I did quite a while back, when I was still doing the penguin character.

This demonstrates the pipeline for my animation. I drew this in Photoshop, imported into AfterEffects to composite it with the skyline and ground.

Enjoy

Set Design Again

Hello! Just a quick update today about my favourite area of this whole production, set design!
*groans* I really don't like sets so in the film my set is going to be a cell shaded CGI element upon which I will composite my animation on. I've already got Jenn agreeing to model the set for me, but I still have actually design it. This in mind, I took a deep breath and plunged into the icy depths of set design. Basically the whole short takes place on a cliff which overlooks what at first was going to be nothing, but now I've replaced with thorns and brambles. Partly to make it more threatening, partly because with those the Kakapo could theoretically survive. He'd just be in horrible, horrible pain rather than being dead. Much cheerier. Also thorns and brambles are green, and the Kakapo is green, so you get the idea in your mind that he's supposed to end up there. The rest of the set, in keeping with what I said before, is paler colours like yellows and browns. Still not happy with the colour scheme here, but I am happy with how the concepts came out. Still want to do a couple more that being said.

I also hate that sign.

Laura's Workings

Hello Again!

If you've visited Laura's blog lately, then what you're about to see is going to be very familiar. Laura nicely asked me to do a few character designs for her. She said she was having problems with her moon character. She wanted him to be a cheeky shocker kind of character that moons the audience. The first person who came to mind was Johnny Knoxville so I did a design along those lines that she seemed to like. Main issue with this is that because of his shape, the bottom half looks a little phallic.

The second character she wanted me to do was the character of Venus. Using the god that the planet was named after, she wanted to make the character. Laura had already gone for a Marylin Monroe type imagine, which I felt was perfect, so I merely expanded more upon that.
After that came Mars, who Laura wanted as an Arnold Schwarznegger type. I sort of went down that road, but went away from the body builder side and more towards the Bruce Willis action hero type. I also put him in military clothing to reflect the 'God of War' that the planet was named after.

I also began to do some work on the aliens that inhabit Laura's film, but around that time I fell ill so the design dropped in quality.

I am not finished designing for Laura, and this will be updated when I have done.

More Character Designs

I've been back on the character designing again, and I've now worked out that the character design of the main character - the Kakapo - is now entering it's final stages. I feel the design has enough appeal and I don't know if I can improve upon it. If I keep trying I could end up ruining the character and wasting time. I've now began to work out the character sheet for the Kakapo. I've devised the rules for how to draw the Kakapo, in case I need to have someone else do in-betweening for me.With the Kakapo finished, I've now moved onto working out the design for the secondary characters. I moved onto doing the Owl first. I didn't really like the first design I did, because it had a 'Totoro' look to it. So I went 'back to the drawing board' so to speak and tried to go for a more 'flour sack' look to the Owl. I like how linear and sharp the character designs, it gives a nice contrast to the Kakapo's softer and rounder appearance. I also think this element gives a little of the Owl's character away as well. He's meant to be rough. He's meant to be mean. He's meant to look like the sort of bloke that if you coughed in his direction would headbutt you in the face, and I think that's coming across in the character's design slowly but surely. It's not there yet, as Sean rightly pointed out, the Owl needs to have a few of his features defined in a way that makes it more recognisably an Owl. In my previous entry I said that some of the colour tests looked more falcon like, and that shouldn't have happened. That was the result of the character design not being up to task. So while I feel the Owl's design is getting stronger, I don't think it's quite there yet.

Moving on from the Owl, I started to look at the other secondary character in the story, the Crane. The Crane has been a source of constant frustration for me, as I can't seem to nail the tall and lanky design that I wanted to do. The character comes across as snooty and elitist alright, but something about the design lacks appeal. An issue I'm having is the neck, I just have no idea what to do with it. No matter what I do the neck seems wrong to me.
That being said, after a meeting with Sean, a set of drawings i did which I'd initially decided were bad designs were suddenly brought to my attention. Sean stated that he preferred this design in a lot of ways, and with fresh eyes I could see why. The character's pose is perfect, and the blocky shoulders I have given him, give the impression he's wearing some kind of blazer without having actually putting a blazer on the character. I still feel that there are some places it's needs to be tightened. The eyes are too small for my liking and it's not really that clear he's wearing glasses, but this is heading in the right direction.

Below is a drawing I did, mostly for myself, so that I could get an idea of what the character's heights were in relation to each other. The Kakapo is definitely the smallest, whereas the larger Owl and Crane are a lot taller, with the Crane being tallest overall.


Lastly, I have started to look at the tertiary characters, the other birds at the school that appear mostly in the line. The first of these I looked at was the only one with any real movement, which is the Pigeon that goes in line before the Kakapo. Not really got many ideas at this stage, and have been jotting down basic sketches to try and get a feel of how I want the Pigeon to look.

I'm not sure what other birds I'm going to use yet, but I suspect they will be dull looking birds, as to fit in with the colour schemes I'm going for.