Monday 26 December 2011

It is all coming to gether now.




So Christmas is just passed us and I'm now only twenty-one days away form my next hand, so that is scary.

anyway moving on from that. I have been finding it hard to done any work while I have been back at my mum's place so I have, started to make a schelde which I can work off when I get back to Universtiy and I can fully concentrate on my work.




I have also have been creating my two main characters for my film the little girl and the dragon.

For this hand in on the 16th of Janurany, I will need to have around thirty seconds worth of animation tests, and I can use the rough model of the girl for the tests now which is great, I'll just have to add a very simple rig on her and do some play blasts. For the dragon however I think due to time, I will make some blocked shapes and rig them together for some animation test that he will be in.

Here is how Alex looks at the moment, most likely by the time you see this though I will have changed a lot. I need to redo how the hair looks. but it is early stuff here.




Wednesday 7 December 2011

Seams like it is coming together.

It is a few days until the 1st part to my hand in. The hand in is on this coming Monday while the 2nd part is due on the 16th of jan.


Pardon the awful joke for the title.

I have been stressing around the place at the moment with my work. So far since my last post I have finished my animatic, done both colour tests for my characters and got the final designs done for both the little girl (Alex) and the dragon. I still really need to get the concept for my backgrounds done.

Here are sone if my concept for my characters.

 Dragon



 Alex


Tuesday 29 November 2011

Rag Dolls and Wooly Dragons

I spoke to my lecturer yesterday and we talked about the design of my character as they apperar to be too much like Dream Works and Disney, which could be a problem if I ever want to put myself out there as a independent artist. here are the most current concepts which I out sourced to someone else and we have been working to achive what I want.






Rough concepts by Gemma Roberts

During the conversation I had with my lecturer he asked me what styles/designs do I like in animation and video games, so I mentioned the video games ilomilo and Costume Quest. ilomilo is a puzzle based game which involves two stubby looking characters (ilo and milo) who are separated to meet up. The world of ilomilo is a frabric styled world, with patch-worked characters, background which look as if a child had drawn them, the block that you walk on and move around seem to be like a cross between a blocked cushion and plushed bean bags. Overall it is a very smooth, warm and soft feel to it.




The design for Costume Quest like ilomilo, it feels very child like and has style to something like a Saturday morning children's animation. I thought this might help me in coming up with some new designs for my world.









I decided I need a more stylized design so using Coustume Quest and ilomilo as my reference I then looked into children's illustrations as my film is about a little girl who no one believes her and think her story is made up, so using children illustration it seemed it would help the veiwers to think that she might be making this up after all and give me a design I can call my own. Here are some images I looked at and liked.


by Hunson Nguyen


The use of colour in this image by Hunson Hguyen is fantasic, the deep blue of flying fish gives off a warm, comfort feeling for me, the same goes the the giffars, the richness and how they have been painted in a non uniformed style makes me think of an older childs drawings.
 by Barry Rockwell

by Chad Geran

by Julie Colombet

by Julie Colombet

by Matthew Scott


by Matthew Scott

These images by Matthew Scott remind me of a cross between the Japanese studio Ghibli and ......The flattness of colour used in the top image with all the animals having dinner  


by Unknown


by Unknown

by Yuri Norstein


by Yuri Norstein





Looking at these images gave me a sense of that I wanted to take my art direction towards that of childerns illustrions and childerns animation. fusing that with idea of ilomilo, I started to think of a frabric styled world. which got me back onto the serach of images with drag dolls and stuff dragon toys.




























The green knitted dragon (above left) is how I am imaging how my dragon in the film will look, in terms of textures. The stubby arms and legs are another feature that I want to include in my design. 


For the little girl though I have been looking at rag dolls for my inspiration I am worried if making her look like that her body wouldn't look right for when she has to move. Rag dolls have very flimsy arms and legs, which wont hold up her body let alone having to hold a sword and shield. However looking at the characters from Pixar's Toy Story Series you can see that they have worked around the fact that some of the toys in real life wouldn't be able to support their weight (Dolly being a prime example.) I think I will have to study their movements for both the dragon and the little girl in my film.



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