background...

So things are well underway now with the design work and pre-production of the project. Over the past few days I have focused on the background designs of the animation. I looked at various styles, making a kind of mood/style board for what I wanted to achieve and I think I'm nearly there. After creating a landscape layout of the area the piece is set in I have created some backgrounds and I think its all coming together. I think the style is working well and the colours, after talking to Kathy, are much better and more thought through. I have also made colour palettes for each object/part of the scenes and will make more finalised versions of these before going into production and colour so that there is continuity throughout.

To see how the style is looking I made this background/concept design using the right style and colouring. I then added in a character to see how they would look together. I think it has the potential to work quite nicely. For the hand in we need a test shot, and I am planning on animating that over the next few days as I would really like a moving image piece to really show how the animation will look.

In terms of getting everything ready for the hand in and finalising the pre-production before Christmas, I think we are on track. The script, storyboard and animatic are complete and working well for now, however obviously these will be tweaked throughout and I'm sure changes will be made. Harriet has the huge job of sorting out the characters. There are quite a lot throughout the animation as the main focus is on the tree which means lots of character designs to think about and finalise. Already she has done a lot of them, and I think they are a much needed improvement on my original designs and will work well with the style and background.
The concept artwork and background designs have been ongoing between Leki and myself, and I think we could do with maybe one other background to really focus on getting the right style and colouring.