colour palettes...

I have taken the colours below from the character designs Harriet has done just to create a bit of a colour palette for the characters and as a reference.

The beginnings of a background...

For the test shot I decided to do the scene with the dog walker as it is a very short part but will show the piece and how it will look. I have started the background for this part to try and test it and the colours. Harriet has done the design for the character already and is working on the turn around. I really want to have a short bit if animation done for the hand in so that I can see it coming together and how it looks before christmas. I will hopefully have more backgrounds and layouts drawn out over the next few weeks and Leki has agreed to help with the colouring.

So this is how it is looking so far...I need to work on the tree a bit,I think it has too many tones on it and needs simplifying colour-wise, and more tonal sketching on it. I have realised that I will definitely need a full colour turn around and model sheet of the tree so that it looks like the same tree in every shot..another job that will be done in the next weeks.

The tree looks quite strangely proportioned below, but this is because of the way I want the camera to pan in the shot and I'm hopign it will look right when I use it as a background.

storyboard re-worked

Having made some changes to the animatic, I then re-worked the storyboard to fit. I have only edited the end of the storyboard from the point where the two men draw the cross on the tree with the intention of cutting it down. So here are the changes below...

edited animatic...

After speaking with tutors and working through the script a little more, I have made some changes to the story and edited parts of the animatic, hopefully to make it work a little better and making it clearer visually. I have made more of a link between the characters towards the end, so that it works from fast snippets and becomes more relative towards the end where hopefully the audience will feel more towards the tree and characters. I think this is definitely working better, however I still think a little more consideration is needed with the shots and angles when it comes to creating the final images.

Starting on the colour...

landscape

Having finished the storyboard and animatic up to a point where I am quite happy with it (I am sure it will change again in the future!) I have started to plan out and think about all of the layouts and backgrounds I will need for the piece. Although there appears quite a lot, I think the majority of them will have part of the landscape in the background, whether it is very small in the far distance, or focused in on it at the landscape is developing and changing. this means that the background landscape is an essential part of the piece and it needs to look the same, or like part of one complete landscape no matter what angle the shot is being taken from. I have therefore drawn out a pan of a landscape which runs from the front main shot of the tree in the centre, out and around, to the view at the back of the tree, so that hopefully if the two ends of the drawing met it would create a complete circle around the tree, as if you were standing in the position of the tree.

It is just the initial sketch idea and I will work on this and other backgrounds over the next few days...

animatic

colour...

I spoke to Kathy about the colour and design for the backgrounds yesterday as this is something I definitely need advice with. Colour has never been one of my strong points and I need to make sure I get it looking right for this piece.

To get a style I started to look at different examples of other works and background designs. I really like the watercolour style pieces and I think this would work well for the piece and the story. I need to keep the colour palette quite neutral with the tree being the main focus and the characters fitting in with the backgrounds, however standing out enough for them to be clear to the audience and easy to see.

When I started to design the project I took inspiration from illustrations by Axel Scheffler for the Gruffalo. I really like the line style used and imitated this, particularly for the main tree. I still want to maintain this line in the closer shots and anything in the foreground, with them becoming thinner and faded towards the distance. However design-wise I want to focus on water-colour styles as the top three images are below, using quite soft neutral colours and shading.



So I have started to put together a bit of a colour palette to base the background designs on. This will be developed further, particularly as I start creating the final layouts and designs. As the characters are being re-worked at the moment, their colours are changing slightly, and these will fit to the background colours and work with them. I will need to do some trials and colour tests to check how everything is working.

coloured storyboard...

storyboarding and animatic

Using the script, I have drawn out a quite sketchy storyboard as shown below. From this I can then work on the camera angles and the story, see how it is all working and work out the timing. When it is finalised I will also be able to use it to work out all of the scenes, and show any other animators what is meant to be happening in the scene. Now I have figured out what is going on, I will develop it further and use it, adding in some more movement to create an animatic, and will use the key scenes from it, and work them so they look a little more finished for the final storyboard.

After hearing that my idea was one of the ones that got through I'm more determined then ever to get it developed, get all the pre-production completed and perfected and get into production as soon as possible. There is so much to do and time seems to be flying by!

Over the last week, I focused on dissertation reading and planning for the first half of the week, whilst waiting for results from the pitches, and then started to draw out a full storyboard and create an animatic once we had had some news. I have almost completed this now and it is true to the sript as it stands, however I think this will be changed, tweaked and developed further over the next few weeks, so could be changing. I think I need to speak to the tutors more to determine changes that need to be made and finalising the script as much as possible, as it makes it hard to move on to layouts and background designs without knowing which backgrounds will or wont be used in production.

Luckily Harriet has agreed to develop the design of the piece a litte further and is looking at the character designs at the moment to improve the final look of them. Leki has also agreed to help out in the project with the designs and pre-production work that needs to be done. Now there are a couple on board with the project I feel it is more managable and achievable. Hopefully I will be able to get some people interested in doing some 2D animation by the time it comes to the production side of things so that there is a bit more of a team to spread the workload out!

the pitch...

sketched ideas...

developing character designs