Scarf Test Shot

I thought as well as getting the feel of drawing the main characters, I'd also have a go at animating the scarf. As Ande (who is the character above) has a scarf and Mozbie (the other main character) has a cape, which will both need to be animated throughout the film. So I thought I'd have a go now, as I haven't really animated anything like that before in 2D. I think it looks decent but it will need to be more erratic.

Unfortunately the quality isn't that great,  even though I exported it in 1080p. I'll try to upload it again, maybe in a different format.

Final Update on Third Year Project

I've finally come to a decision on what I will be doing this year. I've decided to completely drop my story idea, as I didn't think it was developed enough and with the little time that is left, it would have been nearly impossible to turn things around. Which is sad because I did really like my idea and thought there was something great there.

Anyways, I'm now working with Jayce on his project, Candy Island. Here is his blog to see all the work he has done so far:

http://jaycecowleyliminton.blogspot.co.uk/

When we first pitched our ideas a few weeks ago his idea was actually my favourite one. I felt it was something really unique, and it has that randomness and humour that I like. The fact that it was being made in 2D and in a style which I like made me very interested in working with him, so I let him know early that I might like to work on his film (but was concentrating on my idea still, at the time). 

So basically at the moment I'm helping him with the script and storyboarding, trying to finalize the story. The two main characters are finished, and the Marshmallow people (see his blog) are in the process of having final coloured designs. We haven't properly decided yet, but in the production stages I might be the Key Animator (or we'll share it 50/50, having certain scenes/characters to ourselves to keep continuity with the drawings) which is great as that is exactly what I wanted to do. We've also thought about me possibly being the Director, but that has yet to be decided and we'll need to decide on a later date. But having a role like that would be exciting.

So at the moment Candy Island is my main project, working alongside Jayce, but I also hope to possibly work on one or two other projects, probably 2D films, in smaller roles. But that will be decided when I know which films will go through and see what roles people are looking for for their films.

Completed Boy

Got round to giving him legs. I'm really awful at drawing feet and getting the positioning right, so I've gone for something quite simplified - which is the same with the creature. I'm hoping he looks alright! Haha.

And I've given him a shovel to hold to further get across that he is a farmer, and not in any way a soldier. Plus it helps give him a bit of an action pose, as opposed to just standing there lifeless.

Update on where I'm at at the moment

Today I had a one to one chat with Helen Brunsdon, where I explained the situation I'm in at the moment. I found this very helpful and walked off with a better understanding on what I need to do. Basically she said I should carry on with what I'm doing at the moment, which is to keep on working on my project but also trying to sell myself to other members of the group so if I do decide to drop my idea people will (hopefully) want me to work on their animations.

Now, tomorrow we're having a group brainstorming session tomorrow which I will be attending. This is where we will sit down together and help each other with our animations (such as story ideas, what to do in the storyboards, etc). So I'm going to ask for help on my story and try to get it working. HOPEFULLY by tomorrow evening I will have a definitive descision on what I'm going to do. If I can somehow improve on my story and get an ending then I think I will continue with it, and also work on someone elses animation - but in a minor role. If I can't, then I will stop working on The Boy and the Beast and try to work on 2-3 projects, with one large role and 1-2 minor roles.

Fortunately at the moment there are a few people who are interested in wanting me to work with them. I'm helping Omari with his script, Jayce is interested in wanting my help with his storyboard and script (as well as production stuff such as animation) which I'm very interested in doing, and Lydia is looking for anyone to help her on her animation - so I would work on the 2D animation if I worked on her project. I hope to have a chat tomorrow with people and try and sell myself to them, and see who would be interested in me and try and get projects lined up to work on. But basically I'd like to do animation in Flash or Toonboom, help with scripts, any fairly simple modelling in Maya (such as buildings, interiors) In actual fact I'm very interested in Architecture - designing houses, set designs, stuff like that. My Dad works in the Architect business so that's probably why. But yeah, back to before, any post-production stuff in Premiere Pro or After Effects I'm interested in doing as well. To be honest most things really. Just actual 2D animation is my main goal to do.

Things I need to do for my film:
- Finish the storyboard
- Finish the script
- Finalize characters (turnarounds on boy and creature, draw knights)

Quick Test Shot - Creature killing Knight with tail

This is a very quick test shot of one of the shots that would be in my film, not necessarily looking like this though. This is where the creature attacks an unwary knight from behind, hiding amongst the bushes (it'd be a dark scene, so the tail won't be as visible and the eyes will light up in the undergrowth) As you can see, I haven't animated the knight whatsoever. I did this on purpose as my main aim was to animate the tail. As I haven't animated something like a tail before, I wanted to give it a try as early as possible. Overall, I think it looks alright. Needs improving quite a bit, not quite snake-like enough for me - needs to be a bit smoother. So some extra frames would sort that out I think. And the location of the tail needs tweaking, but then if it's a dark scene that won't matter as much (I'm talking mostly towards the end when you can see more of the tail) Obviously the Knight will react in the finished shot, his body jolting forwards and his head possibly being ripped off his shoulders (I'm not sure whether to include blood - at the moment I don't think I should). All gory stuff haha

Village Scene

The lighting is way off, and the other buildings aren't completed yet (there will be much more variety in the shapes of the buildings). This is simply to show what the village will look like.

I'm off to work now, so I'm unable to carry on with it at this moment in time. I'm not really going to go into too much detail with this, incase I do decide to stop working on my film. But yeah, here is the bland looking village!

The Inn

In any spare time I have found I've been experimenting in Maya, trying to get better at modelling and learning more about the software - as at the end of the day, 3D is what I would like to get into in the future but my skills are nowhere near up to scratch yet.

So basically, as I have stated before, for The Boy and the Beast (still not the final name), I was contemplating whether to have some 3D in the film. But only for the village, and then textured in the same style/palette as the 2D. So it should have a 2D/3D look to it.

So yeah, this would be the Inn for the village. It'd be the biggest building in the village, with most of the other buildings being much smaller in size (similar to the house I made in a previous post). As with that one, this isn't finished. I had a play with the lighting and shadows, and it needs more design elements such as beams and outside objects. But I just thought I'd show what I've done so far.

UPDATE

With beams

I forgot to add the beam on the right side when I rendered this. Ooops.



UPDATE

With small window

 I'm going to carry on with this tomorrow. I plan to add more beams, a chimney, possibly some more windows, and other small details. This would be the main building used, other than the boys house (which will be much smaller and made out of wood) so I need it to be the most detailed. I would also create the interior on a later date, in the production stages, as well as textures and the like.

The Boy and The Beast (placeholder title - not yet finalized, might also call it The Myth)

" Not your ordinary folktale"

 Synopsis

A small bustling village is in terror from a creature which resides nearby. No one has ever succeeded in killing it, so when a teenage farmer boy decides to go after the creature himself, can he prevail where knights and soldiers before him have failed? And what will be the consequences if he does? There is more to this story than meets the eye... this is definitely not your ordinary folktale.

The Boy and The Beast (placeholder) will be a 3 minute animated film filled with horror and dark humour.

The Boy

Here is my design of the boy. I'm going for a little bit of a stylised look, sort of cartoon-ish. (I've been having a look at a lot of animations such as Samurai Jack, Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown for inspiration and ideas for style) Ideally my aim was to have the animation look like 13th/14th century paintings to fit in with the era of the film - but I am not a brilliant drawer and this would have taken ages to produce if made like that. So that's why I've gone for a much more simpler look.

Update on my Animation Idea 2

I would very much like to continue to work on my idea and to make a film out of it, and I will carry on with designs for the village/characters. But in the meantime I have been asking around to find people to work with on their animations. If my film does fall through then I would like to work with 1-3 groups depending on how much work I have to do. I'm aiming to work with 2D projects, as I would like to do animation using either ToonBoom or Flash as they are software I am comfortable with. I would also like to do any modelling (nothing too complicated though) in Maya if I can, and I am familar with Premiere Pro/After Effects/Soundbooth for anything in Post Production. And if I do join people/groups soon I would like to work on storyboarding and scripts, as I feel they are one of my strong points - and any concept drawings/designs too.

Update on my Animation Idea

I've been thinking a lot recently, and I've pretty much now decided to drop my animation idea altogether and stop work on it completely. Unfortunately I am unable to settle on a story. I have the setting and the characters all sorted, but I can't quite nail the storyline that I was going for. I had a few similar ideas but I couldn't choose one, and to me none of them had that 'wow factor' that I wanted to have.

After having a chat with another one of my lecturers, I decided to change the story from the one in a separate post below. I really wanted to have a dark humour/horror feel to it, but nothing too drastic. My inspirations are The Wickerman, The Village, The Cabin in the Woods and also Hot Fuzz (the cult) which I'm sure you'll soon realise. As stated before, I had a few story ideas which were all quite similar, but here are the basic outlines of two of the ideas I liked the most:

 IDEA 1

Set in a remote village, this little village is a popular place to come because of a myth that surrounds it. Constantly bustling with people, soldiers and knights from all over the country come to visit and stay in the local Inns, bringing in a lot of revenue for the village. The myth itself is of a creature which resides just outside the village. For many centuries soldiers have tried, and failed, to kill this creature, who 'attacks' the village at random. To this day people still try to kill it, for there is a reward for doing so - 100 gold coins, and the title of 'beast slayer'.

So you think everything is normal. It's just another day where knights are trying to kill the creature. But we, as viewers, realise there's more to this story than meets the eye. The villagers are in fact in with the killings. They have come to an 'understanding' with the creature, which is that as long as they constantly bring him food (in the form of humans - the knights and soldiers) he would spare the village. So for many years this 'agreement' has stood strong, the village staying safe and the knights unknowingly serving as tasty food. So to show this in one of the scenes we see a group of knights being surrounded, stalked and attacked by the creature (I would want a few quick shots here) as they are picked off one by one in different ways (e.g the tail of the creature pierces a body of a knight and drags it back into the darkness of the forest).

But one day a young teenage boy, who is a farmer, decides he's had enough with this pact and thinks it's wrong that it should continue. So he sets off, on no more than an hours journey (which will just be one or two shots of him traversing the landscape and the forest) to the creature's lair on a horse and cart until he finally arrives and comes face to face with it. He tells the creature than he has come only to bring a gift, which he does - a massive baked Pie. So the creature devours the pie immediately, along with the horse which the boy unfortunately forgets about. Seconds later the creature falls to the ground, stone dead. The boy then cuts the head off, throws it into a bag and drags it back through the forest to his Village. He imagines how happy the villagers will be, no longer having to live in terror and give in to the creatures demands. Upon arriving though his thoughts suddenly vanish. In a shock twist, when he shows off the creatures head he realises that the villagers are furious with him that he killed it. After all these years they had ended up looking up at it like a God, some even worshipping it. And now that everyone knew the creature was dead no one would visit here again. So they grab the boy and punish him (now this is where I'm stuck, I'm not sure how to end it or what the punishment would be - the ideas I have are that he either becomes an outcast after being thrown out of the village OR he's tied to a steak or something - or something similar to the end of The Wickerman and burnt. Which would be a REALLY dark ending, maybe too dark, I'm not sure...)

IDEA 2

Very similar to before, but instead there isn't a creature at all (well, not at the beginning anyway)

The villagers created the myth to make their village popular again, because it was run-down and practically in ruins. But the revenue coming in had allowed them to bring it back up to how it used to be. So the knights go off to find the creature, we see that they are actually killed by the villagers at the location of the 'creature', which is hidden in the forest around the village. They then craftingly fling the helmets or weapons with a hidden catapult over the trees, and make fires and scorch the earth as if the creature had breathed fire. 

But the twist is that there is actually a creature, which is awakened after being in dormant for many, many years. So it attacks the village, killing nearly everyone but one unlikely hero (the boy) ends up killing it in a witty way (the pie?)

(As you can tell, this idea is nowhere near as developed as the last, and doesn't have as much of an ending - if one at all) 

So yeah, unfortunately I'm not sure if I'm going to carry on with this. I don't know if it has got enough of a story, if there's too much going on for it to fit into a 3 minute film, whether it will be too difficult to create...or if it should be an animation at all. As one of the things my lecturers say is that if it's something which can be created in live-action, then it shouldn't be an animation. I'll just have to see how this goes. I hope to talk to some people about my idea and give a final descision as to whether or not I will go ahead with this idea, but I am very passionate about it. I love mythical tales and stories about creatures, so I wanted to do one myself, but in a darker tone. As nearly all of the mythical tales I have read have a good ending, the most common being where the guy kills the creature and gets the girl/fame. The other reason why I wanted to go for dark humour/horror is that it doesn't seem like none of my other coursemates have gone for that theme. Most of them are going to be made for children, which is definitely not the target audience I am looking for with my film. 

 

Maya Wooden House

As I might be using some 3D in my animation, I thought it would be best to try and get back into Maya (as I am a little rusty after not using it for a while). Or incase I had to work on a 3D project, where buildings or interiors needed to be built - as that is something I would like to do.

So this is just a small wooden house, which would be part of the tiny village that's in my story. I've far from finished modelling it, so it may be quite rough. Yet to add a door or details, but I will do later on. Just thought I'd show what I've done so far.

Characters - Creature and Boy

 This is my creature. What's not more badass than a scaled sabre-tooth tiger with a horn and a scorpion tale? Haha. I wanted to go for a little bit of a anime/stylized look, so I haven't gone into much detail such as the feet. But I didn't want him looking like a Pokemon (I hope I haven't!) As you can see below, I tried a couple more different colour variations but I preferred this one the most. He'll be pretty big, about twice the size of a regular sabre-tooth. You won't really see much of him in the film, only glimpses, until right when the boy kills him.

 

Very rough drawing of the boy, just to give you an idea of what he'll probably look like. Again, I sort of want it to look a little like anime, mainly with the eyes and jawline. I'll upload a better drawing in the future when I have settled on a design.

Animation Idea

I have thought of a story for my film, which is inspired by stories on mythical creatures and folktales.

Set in 14th Century England, there resides a small remote village in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by forests and mountains, it is a place of beauty...until you look a little closer, that is. The village is terrorized by a creature, that of which has never been seen before. It lives up in the mountain, and attacks the village without warning killing the livestock and even a few villagers. This has been going on for many months.

The film begins with a panoramic shot of the scenery, slowly closing in with hills and trees parting off screen until focused totally on the village. It then cuts to showing the village from inside, where we see that it looks quiet and almost deserted. A sign blows in the wind warning any travellers to stay away. Away from the village centre now, and we see a farm just on the outskirts. A figure is working in the fields, which when the camera cuts to a close up appears to be a boy. It is only when he turns around from hearing a sound of a bell do we see his face, to which he reacts instantly by dropping the rake he was holding. (now after this part, I'm stuck on what to do - my one idea was that he would run towards the sound, which originates from the village. When he arrives there is a crowd of people surrounding two figures, one of which is a soldier and other the village mayor. They had sent all their avaliable soldiers up to the mountain to kill the creature, but to no prevail. Only the one had surived, and he had just returned to give the bad news to the people. Desperate and scared, the Mayor then asks for anyone left brave enough to kill the creature, and the person who does so gets to marry his daughter - who is rumoured to be extremely beautiful, although no one has ever seen her in the flesh. Sort of an incentive I suppose. And that's when the boy decides to go off to try and kill the creature. BUT my other idea, was to have the bell, but instead of telling the people the soldiers had returned, it's instead a warning that the creature is coming. This will be set more in the evening, around dusk, and will have more of a horror feel to it, where we see villagers hiding under their windows in their houses and seeing the shadow of the creature through the window or in the gaps between nailed wooden planks. And perhaps a scream at the end when the creature manages to kill. The next morning, when it's over, the farmer boy walks to the village and there the mayor is asking anyone brave enough to kill the creature can marry his daughter (so the same as before, except with no soldiers - there will be none at all in this version).

So the boy sets off with a horse and cart to kill the creature, and manages to do so (I've yet to figure out a way he can - I'd like it to be clever - perhaps something a little silly like leaving a big poisoned pie for the creature to eat, and then the boy cuts its head off and brings it back to the village as proof that it is dead the same day). I was also thinking of having the creature sort of stalk him, so for example when the boy walks past a pond or a bush, you see its tail quickly or something. When the boy returns with the news, he is given a heroes welcome, and also his reward - the Mayors daughter. This is when we finally see her...except, she isn't what the boy imagined. She isn't beautiful at all, the complete opposite in fact. As ugly as anything he'd ever seen.

Now I'm not sure how to end the film, whether here or by having to add something else in after this - and I'm also not quite sure whether to have the girl in it at all. I wanted a twist of some sort in my film, and having had a discussion with one of my lecturers, I thought it would be funny for the girl to turn out to be ugly. I'm also a little confused on the tone I'm going for, whether it's light hearted and funny or dark and a sense of horror. This is something I'm going to have to think about.

As for other ideas, I thought that if I did go with the girl, then I wouldn't have the boy talk at all throught the film. Everyone else will, and as viewers we find out everything by other characters. He is silent throughout, except for at the end when he sees the girl and a word finally comes out of his mouth! (this is just a thought). Like, "OH HELL NO!" - Will Smith style.

The story is still in development, and I am trying to think of new ideas for it. But I would like to stick with the boy having to kill the creature anyway.

Back for my third and final year!

Well, better late than never I suppose!

Started back at uni last week, excited but also slightly terrified at what is to come! The time has finally arrived for me to begin thinking of an idea for animated film to Pitch in November. And if it gets the go ahead, I can finish off the Pre-Production stages, and then after Christmas start on Production. Scary haha! Meanwhile I have to work on my dissertation, soo definitely a busy year for me. ..Let's begin!