Watercolour Concept Art

Since my rediscovery of using watercolour, now with the ability to paint without permanently crinkling the paper, I have taken the technique to some new concept art for Acorns. Using some new A3 watercolour paper, I sketched out some new and old character poses on one sheet and character expressions on a second sheet and did some pastel watercolour washes over it.

I'll be using the expressions sheet as reference for some of my character performance later on. They were largely inspired by character sketches by Hayao Miyazaki in art books for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo and Oliver Jeffers gorgeous watercolour imagery in his children's books.

The Art Of Kiki's Delivery Service

Oliver Jeffer's Lost and Found

I love the storybook quality to using watercolour with pencil sketches in this way and would love to do this for an entire illustrated book of my film... if I only had the time! I've really enjoyed using watercolour and may introduce it further in my film for backgrounds or at the very least using the bright, pastel-like colour palette for my digital clean-up and colouring.

More to come in the new year! :)

Concept Art and Pre-Visualisation

I wanted to try some watercolour to compare colours for the seasons for the Oak tree, with reference to Oliver Jeffers and My Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo for colours.

I particularly like how the colouring for winter has turned out and plan to do more of these over the Christmas break.

And here is a pre-visualisation test using rough pencil lines and digital colouring. I dropped in a sketch of Amber and the Spirit as well to see if they fit with the background style... I think it works quite well!

Character Sketches V

Last Monday I spoke to James about making my Spirit look like a Spirit. I had been looking at Spirits/Gods in Japanese games that morning (i.e. Kikwi in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Amaterasu/Chibiterasu in Okami) which is in sync with some of the Japanese woodblock/watercolour influences earlier in my development. While he originally thought it should be more of a squirrel now, he agreed that the loose brush strokes and mist-like swirls implemented in Okami gave that impression of otherworldness that my Spirit needs and would be appropriate to contrast the Spirit's world with that of Amber's.

Later on, Matthew also agreed with the new direction for my character designs. He said that the Spirit should still be squirrel-like in movement in a quick and zippy sort of way so I should do some research on them at parks like Bute Park in Cardiff filming them and drawing etc. Basically my designs were all good to go with which I was very happy about as I had been stressing over them for a while

We also spoke about shortening my animatic and how I was going to go about going from a 5 minute film to about 3-4 minutes and how to convey a performance using dot eyes on Amber. He said he'd rather I spent more time focusing on good animation and less about worrying about clean-up: the rough, loose line I've been using for my sketches are fine. I thought back to watching 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book and how I loved seeing the construction lines popping up every now and then, so I think I will keep the rough style (which suits the natural, textured world of my film anyway) but experiment with how I colour it.

These are sketches I did of my new character direction that day:

I'm using Okami, guinea pigs, rabbits, foxes and squirrels for my main point of reference. Here's Amber interacting with him and more dot eyes:

The next day (Tuesday) I met with Leonie for feedback on my new designs. She also preferred my new sketches and enjoyed the lively poses and clear silhouettes. She said the dot eyes encouraged a triangular formula for 'cuteness' that is almost equilateral between eyes and the nose. On animal toys, the more squashed this triangle the cuter and the longer the triangle the more wise and 'knowing' it becomes. This is difficult to achieve on humans as they can start to look alien very quickly. On Amber's face this triangle is between her eyes and mouth with the nose in the middle, which is fine but I will have to keep her eyes small to avoid the 'lifeless' look that bigger eyes can encourage when highlights and glows are not compensating for the size of the eye (e.g. anime).

As long as her eyes are small and stay in line with the mouth/nose, it will focus her gaze and allow me to do the dot eyes, but I can always do very small eyes that show the pupil and the lids like Joanna Quinn's Charmin Bear. Leonie's favourite drawing that summed up my girl's character was this one from my previous post:

Simply because it shows her carefree and somewhat selfish attitude in one drawing. She pointed out others that demonstrated her personality and said that the shy/sad drawings are best saved for the ending where they will be more effective.

Finally, Leonie was much happier with the Spirit drawing which looked like a guinea pig with the fox-like tail that flows and breaks apart like water as it is enough to suggest it's spirit-ness. She liked the vagueness of the feet and angular eyes and the bottom-left most drawing of the first image in this post in which the Spirit looks angry and has the deer-like leaf antlers and the orb of light... however that may be too difficult to do against light backgrounds and it is perhaps too serious...

Finally I need to make it absolutely explicit what's going on in the beginning of my film, so that the montage in the middle can be made much shorter. I've uploaded my newest animatic, so I will post that up next.

And here's an image of my Spirit design references looking at lots of animal art and spiritual creatures!

Character Sketches IV

More Amber sketches focusing on the dot for eyes approach. Some of the drawings feel really succesful and most of them are proportioned correctly now so she looks about 5-6 years old. A few are still slipping into older proportions but that's something I can continue to hone.

So far I'm perferring this style of eye and proportions however it won't be possible to do some of the subtle eye movements that a larger eye with a pupil could do, but most of my action can be shown with a turn of the head or a body movement so I shall see how this applies to my next animatic.



I also have a sheet of new Spirit ideas, looking at waving motion and wave-like symbols to tie-in with the oak leaves. I did some rough keys of a swaying and morphing tail that swirls and breaks apart like water, this could help sell the mystical 'spirit-ness' of my creature. I'll be examining spirits from Japanese video games next to see how I can visually show this creature as something Spiritual, but not like a ghost and still having animal qualities. From my research so far, I have found Japanese folklore to be rich with animal spirits/Gods that are abstracted in some way, while Celtic mythology appears too dark and realistic for now.

Pre-Visualisation Test

For my Pecha Kucha presentation last Monday, I did a pre-visualisation test to get a feel for how my film might look. The aim is to draw and colour a 'finished frame' of your film to suggest the look and colour scheme without having to animate.

I was inspired by Winnie The Pooh (2011) backgrounds and the colour scheme of a painting, The Strangest Autumn, by Patricio Betteo on DeviantArt (see these below respectively).

This is the pre-vis I created in Photoshop using these as references. I used a grainy brush to simulate the pencil line and a large brush on low opacity for the colour.

Personally I think it's suggesting the tree, sky and hill too realistically like in Winnie the Pooh. It's not as detailed, but it's not stylised enough for my story. I'm considering looking at more historical art and old Welsh/British/Celtic styles to get the traditional and mystical feel of my local history but in a modern setting.

More pre-vis tests very soon!

Spirit of the Oak Tree Development

Here are some more sketches of my Spirit Design as my 'ghost-like' image is not serving the character well. I'm trying to break through it by applying animal characteristics and leaf/acorn insignia so that it is 'of' the tree... some of these are still looking a tad on the Pokémon side of things, but I'll be refining these in a later post.

At the moment I'm experimenting with a small 'floaty' design, or a four-legged creature. Looking at other Spirit designs, especially tree spirits, artists/photographers tend to look for faces in tree trunks or branches that appears to take human form. This is something I'd like to avoid, like Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas (1995), for example (see below). It's much too obvious and I think a physical embodiment of the tree's spirit will be best for interaction between the characters.

On the other hand, this illustration for the Totoro Forest Project by Scott Campbell has such life and personality in this wonderfully simple design. I like the size of the creature, it looks like it could actually be a part of the forest, however I need something more 'travel size' for my film to be more easily concealed and less cumbersome.

Tree Spirit with Bike by Scott Campbell

I like the smaller creatures surrounding him too, but they are far too much like Totoro's friends in My Neighbour Totoro, so I will have to look elsewhere.

I'm having difficulty picking one of my sketches to push forward with as I need something that is cute enough to relate to, simple enough to animate and unique enough to stand on its' own as a design... I like having it as an squirrel or owl to relate to the tree so I'll develop that next.

To end, I've done another take of my character designs, this time to include one of my favourite versions of the Spirit, however it's still too 'ghost-like' and boring, and the colours are not unlike a carrot! So it's by no means final!

Amber Concepts

Another page of sketches for Amber. I'm gradually pinning down her design and expressions for animating a walk cycle test tomorrow.

I took her design into Photoshop to try a digital 'cleaned-up' version. I like the textured orange line around her, but I doubt fully inking each frame will be achievable for my film, so I will address colouring the original cleaned pencil lines for my model sheet.

Ideas Pitch

Hello and welcome to the production blog for my final film at Newport University. :)

Today was the pitching session for my fellow third years and I. Overall our ideas were well-received but there is still much to do to make our films stand out from the crowd!

My film is about an unlikely friendship between girl and tree spirit, how they grow up together and eventually move on from the loss of that friendship.

This is the synopsis that I presented today:

Upon a hill grows an ancient Oak tree, which also happens to be  home to a playful tree Spirit. Amber, an imaginative and curious youngster, befriends this Spirit and through the years and seasons they form the strongest of friendships. Eventually Amber reaches adulthood and although her personality is no different from the little girl she once was, the Spirit knows it’s time for her to grow up.

One night, the Oak and Spirit that was once the centre of Amber’s life is struck down by lightning. Heartbroken at the loss of her dearest friend, she breaks down. But when she sees a tiny sapling tree rising from the destruction, the seed of change starts to grow inside her.

And here is some of my initial concept art for my main character, Amber, and the grand old Oak Tree.

My feedback basically suggested that I put limitations on my animation to reduce the workload and avoid the "full" Disney-style animation that I'm used to as I'm working individually on this. Possibly even animating mostly in silhouette... all these decisions will be worked through in the coming months. All my progress will be posted here so do check back for more updates.

Thanks for reading, see you again soon!
Gemma