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!

Project Cheese (Finished Animation)

Well here it is, my finished animation for the Yes, Yes, No assignment - Project Cheese. As you may already know, it was a group project consisting of me, Heidi Orford and Brian Williams. We each had 3 major roles and one worked after the other, so I think we had a really good set-up and in the end it worked out very well as we handed it in before the deadline set. Heidi was the main animator and animated the mouse and claw. I cleaned up any animations she gave to me and then coloured them in frame by frame - and then finally rendered them out. And Brian edited everything together and also created all the backgrounds.

Overall I'm pleased with how it looks. I think it may need some music and a little more sound effects, but I think for a 60-90 second piece of animation, which can have no dialogue apart from 'yes' and 'no', it works quite well. I'm pleased with the character and actually I could see him being used again in another story where he's trying to steal the cheese, this time using another created contraption maybe.

Final Cinematography Project

I've been trying to upload this for the past 3 days but have had no luck, so I've converted it to a lower quality format which explains why it isn't very good quality and a little juddery.

This is my finished film for the cinematography assignment that was due in yesterday. Me and my group had some really great feedback, but there are a few changes we need to make. The most important is the sound. We did want it to be a silent film, but we were told to add sound in places such as when the officer fires his gun or the sound of tearing flesh at the end. Some shots also need to be cut down as well, again with the second to last shot which goes on for a little too long, and when he finishes looking through the telescope.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this. I really like the black and white look to it, and we certainly put a lot of effort into this - whilst trying to complete 2 other projects at the same time.

Quick Note

I will upload the finished animations for both Yes, Yes, No and Red or Dead when they are given to me by my directors :)

Red or Dead Backgrounds/ Symbols

 

I didn't paint the queen but I did paint the two backgrounds. My role was main animator, but I helped with a few of the backgrounds/symbols to help Kylie and Phoebe (the two pre-production members in my group.

These 3 symbols were painted by Kylie, but I wanted to give an example as to the cut-out feel we wanted. This is the shot when the princess is shocked. We haven't included any smooth animations - everything is like the above.

Final Rendered Shot

We were unsure as to how to get an alpha channel in Flash so when we exported it and placed it in Premiere Pro, we could easily add the backgrounds. In the end though I had to render every shot with a green background so then it could be replaced with the actual backgrounds.

Red or Dead Project

It's coming along nicely at the moment. We're getting a lot done and in the past few days we've moved on quite a lot! Currently I'm taking symbols (photoshop drawings) which are being created by two members of my group (Phoebe and Kylie) and animating them in Flash, sticking to the cut-out look that we aimed for at the beginning of the project. So there will be no smooth animation, just lots of symbols one after the other to give the cut-out effect. I'm also painting some of the symbols (including the photo below) as well as a couple of the backgrounds which I will upload at a later date. My role is pretty much Head Editor, but I am helping with the production stuff as well.

 

I can't remember if I've mentioned the story of this project but basically it's about a princess saving a prince from a castle (reversed roles) and then escaping from the evil queen and her frog soldiers by using bicycles. It has to showcase the Red or Dead bicycles in some shape or form, but it isn't an advert. We just had to come up with a crazy storyline (which RoD wanted) and make sure to include the bicycles.

Shot from 'Project Cheese'

This is a test shot from Project Cheese (Yes, Yes, No project). I didn't draw the animation, but I cleaned it up and coloured it. The animation itself will be in our film, but he won't be pressing the button. That is from another scene. After consulting with my director she told me that he is just moving his hands and not pressing the button. But I had included the background as a test shot because I wanted a look at how the animation came together with the background.

Cinematography Project

These are screenshots from my cinematography project. We wanted to have it in black and white to fit with the era of the films setting.

Basically the story is set during World War 2 with a German Officer alone in a bunker. He spies a dead body on the beach near to his location and goes to check it out. He finds the body (who is a female gypsy) with an amulet in her hand which he takes. As he walks off the gypsy is shown to actually be alive and gets up off the floor. When he arrives back at his bunker the Officer is ambushed by zombies, and so runs back to the beach, with the undead in pursuit. He turns and fires his gun at the zombies, which proves to have no effect and he is eventually overran and killed. The final shot then shows his hand holding the amulet to the sky.

I was cast as one of the zombies in my group film project (which was really fun!). And as I am post-production, my role was to edit and put the footage we had filmed together, as well as add effects (which is yet to be done) and composite it. The effects won't be much, just some blood splatters and the like.

We filmed at Pendennis Castle as it has WW2 bunkers and artillery, which we thought would be perfect for our film. They were very happy for us to film there, and even let us go in for free!

Some of the cast and crew (with me in the middle!) after finishing the filming.

Just an update on what's happening (and why this is such a belated post)

Wow I really haven't posted anything in a long time! I literally had a month off during the summer. Visited London, which I've never been before. So that was exciting. Went to practically every tourist location there is. And I spend a fortune! But it was fun. After that it's just been work, work, work. Recently handed in my second lot of literature reviews and a game analysis towards my dissertation, so that's all done now. I actually quite enjoyed it! Just got a few film and animation projects going. Hopefully get 'Project Cheese' completed soon, it's nearly there! Then got a couple more to do. One is a 2 minute silent film and the other is a piece of animated and live-action footage showcasing a product (for us it's a bike) from a London based company called Red or Dead. We pitched to them a few days ago and they liked our idea, so now we can go ahead and get started on it.

Soo yeah, a busy but exciting few weeks! I'll try to check in when I can but there is a chance I won't haha.

Water Shader

Attempted to make a water shader in Maya. I think it looks pretty decent, certainly needs some tweaking here and there (and of course something better than just a polygon sphere!) but I think it's okay. Didn't take me too long at all, pretty easy process. I'm going to carry on with it and get it looking better. Perhaps adding more to the scene such as boat, and give it a background

Animatic

Animatic

Yes, Yes, No Work

Thought I should finally upload all the pre-production work that has been done for my group animation Project Cheese!

These pages are from the bible I made and put together containing all the work. What I've done myself are the storyboard, script, rough background designs, claw design and some research, as well as contributing towards some of the other work.

As well the work, I found myself playing the role as the producer, so I was the one to oversee everything and organise my group.

We are on good stead to complete the animation before the deadline. 

Blend Shaping