Hello The Christmas break is here!! But by no means do I get a
break.
I am planning to carry on with my work at a steady pace through the
holidays. Yesterday I did a little bit of my business studies, planning on
where my future is going to be to write up my business report.
Today I am mainly spending a little time on my practical animation
module as yesterday I put all my video reference together as a sort of live
action animatic, it has become apparent 3 of my scenarios are over 2 minute
long that is 6 minutes in total- this is way too long so I have to take a
couple of days after Christmas to sort this out and re-tie them, just a quick
re-jig of what I am doing.
I have got a musician working on the music already he is currently
having PC issues so I won’t get my music snippets until after my hand in.
My plan for today is just start from the top and work my way down
through everything that I have done, to see if I have missed anything.
Being as it is Christmas Eve it think my dissertation will be neglected
tonight, but I am not too worried, I have a pretty clear of which direction I
am taking it, and it is coming together well.
A couple of week’s back I was researching huts and cabins and I came
across an artist,
Richard Greaves the "Anarchitect" has been very influential on
how I design the exterior of my witches hut, I don't even know if I will be
using it for a scene but I still wanted to give her a place of being, to ground
my character and build her up. Read more about him here.
It is final film & show reel time and I am so excited !
For our final animation brief we have to make a film, pre-production- in great depth or a show reel.
I being the awkward soul I am, have opted for a series of mini scenario films that are art heavy as oppose to animation heavy. So I have a concoction of all the of the briefs!
While I do love animation and I do want to be an animator, I haven't lost sight that I want to be a comic book illustrator for a career, so I am making animated comic books for a part of my show reel/film to address both these sides of my passion.
I wanted to make a witch film earlier in the year, and now I have done extensive research into this topic and my project has now developed immensely from what I started with, it has taken upon many looks and I have taken on board many suggestions.
I hope to be collaborating a lot this year, people working on my film/show reel and myself working on others projects too. Research for my character!
Mavis, Hotel Transylvania
I have done a lot of research into my character, I did the early concepts of her around September time. The she was put on hold until a couple of weeks ago when I did some proper research into designing her.
I have taken some major inspiration from Mavis (Hotel Transylvania). I found Mavis while looking for inspiration for hair styles, although I didn't use her hair style I took inspiration from her body shape to create my character.
Artists and their styles that influenced me are Loish and Randy Bishop.
Loish, Drift.
I love Loish's style, colour palette and textures, I also love the line she uses creates energy in her work in contrast to how delicate the characters look. Her characters look anatomically correct and that is a look I hope to achieve in my project.
As Loish has done, I would also really like to do an animation test with an immense amount of detail, however it be very subtle like a blink or an eye glisten, maybe hair caught in a breeze.
Randy Bishop,
Randy Bishop's ability to get a feel for a character is flawless, and I love how you can instantly look at one of his characters and know who they are. His line is a lot cleaner and his colour is more bold and simple than Loish's art.
His main inspiration for me is again, anatomy. But the facial features on his characters are so expressive, I hope to achieve this in my work.
Other key inspirations for my project is my love of sorcery and witchcraft, I have loved it ever since I was little. Obviously films like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were very infulencial on me, but a main inspiration for my film is The Dark Crystal and the concepts by Brian Frowd.
Blayne Fox
I have had other inspirations too, for the familiar I was inspired by Blayne Fox's entry to a character design competition. I love the idea of the cat being covered in eyes and I have seen it as a real challenge for my animation and redesign for my familiar.
Environment
Other inspirations: dark crystal - brian frowd
Inspiration for Hut Interior
I found a few interesting things for inside the witches hut on Pinterest, they were very inspirational, I hope to upload concept background sketches next week to show how I have implemented them.
In terms of backgrounds as a whole Kazuo Oga is personally my undisputed background genius, he is amazing. I do want a traditional look to my film even though it is being made mostly in a digital format. But if I can make background half as good as him I will be happy.
I hope to do some watercolour backgrounds soon I will upload in my next update.
In the mean time watch this sorcery.
Scenarios
I plan on having 3 scenarios in my show reel as well as a few line tests, and walk cycles and possibly arcs. The 3 scenarios are going to be in different styles and software but all based in the same world- this is because the scenarios are longer and wouldn't leave me with any time to design more characters so I would like to stick to 2-3 characters for the scenarios, instead of having lots of short clips and lots of characters and be preproduction heavy as there is not a lot of time.
Comic Scenario
I have a script, storyboard and rough thumbnails and animatic, i was going to do it in CelAction but my lecturers advised against it as it would take more time than I have to complete the scenario, mainly due to all the replacement shapes cutting into my time and the characters are very "human" as it was described and wouldn't have a good flow, it may seem floaty or clunky which isn't what I am going for for the comic book animation. Originally I took inspiration from the Watchmen Motion comic on YouTube, which I later found to be a bit too floaty for what I want to do:
For the comic section I love the looks of Sandman by Neil Gaiman and Wytches Scott Snyder so my comic book is mainly going to art heavy, I am thinking of doing it in Adobe Animate and After Effects so I can get the multi-plane aspect nailed and mixed with some smooth and graceful animation. My preprodcution will include the usual character design, turnaround, and expression sheets but I need to make loads of textures to achieve that Wytches look. By and artist simply know as Jock
I was also thinking of attempting to capture the style and finesse of J.H Williams' art work from Sandman.
I have my thumbnails my storyboard is still rough but it is nearly there, I think it needs some tweaks and the other 2 storyboards should be finalised by next week. For now I have my very rough animatic for the comic book sequence, I will be introducing pops of colour in the final i am so excited to make this!!
I think that is enough Information for this post I will upload most of my work in the next update, I want to get parts finalised before I show my progress.
