More Colour Palettes

Final Colour Sheets for Amber and the Spirit in Winter, Spring and Summer. The last sheet will be Amber at night time and a couple of other lighting conditions and prop colouring. These also represent final character designs.

The Spirit changes colour throughout seasons as well as Amber's clothes, my idea was to give Amber pastel-like primary colours and the Spirit secondary colours as well as appropriate colours for the scene/seasons, so Autumn is warm and orange (but red when danger is near), Winter is cool, clean and blue, Spring is fresh greens filled with colourful flowers and Summer is hot and rich in greens, blues and yellows.

It's important as well for these colours to complement the backgrounds as well as each other, so I will have some colour/mood sheets for those too.

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! :)

Knitted Dragons Concept Art

NOTE: This post is unrelated to my film, but is additional evidence of my work and character design for a fellow animation student.

These are concepts and character designs for my friend and fellow student, Robert Morgan, for his film about knitted dragons.

http://knitteddragon.blogspot.com/

The purpose of these was to design Rob's character, Alex, and the dragon she battles in his film. The film is in full CGI so it was important to be accurate with the drawings and show the characters from several angles.

These were done between late November to December 2011 (Newest at the top)

Model sheets show up many problems in design before going on into the modeling stage of CG in Maya, to cause even more trouble. Issues such as showing Alex's emotion with dot eyes and without eyebrows, moving her short arms convincingly and the dragon moving from all fours to standing upright. 

Alex Style Experimentation

Below is early development that was altered to better suit Rob's style of Maya modeling. While this was adequate for 2D animation, it was not relevant to stylised CGI, being too naturalistic and organic. What was needed was more geometric symmetry and a less realistic approach to character design.

Early Alex Development

Early 'squirrel-like' Dragon Development

Early 'squirrel-like' Dragon Development

Early 'squirrel-like' Dragon Development

Rob is now modeling the characters and experimenting with colour so my assistance with his designs are over for now, but more drawings may be required later and I will give him feedback for how my model sheets have been interpreted. More on that in the coming months.

Model Sheet and Sketches

Here's a new model sheet for Amber and the Spirit of the Oak Tree. The designs are nearly final now, this needs a little work on maintaining proportions and perspective, but the line quality is pretty much there and I've done a coloured version too.

I've gone for bright primary colours that are toned down enough to almost be softer pastel colours. I've avoided pinks/purples for Amber, instead going for more neutral primary colours and a bit of lime green so she is more of a tomboy. The Spirit is a warm amber colour that fades where it will become more transparent. The ear leaves are a more faded green to try and avoid carrot comparisons! Not sure if that is successful yet!

And to finish off, more character sketches of Amber and the Spirit together, showing lots of emotion tests. I'll sort out an expressions sheet for them soon.

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.

Character Sketches III

More character sketches of Amber I've done over the past week, the first look at story scenarios for my new animatic as well as younger versions of Amber, then after my feedback, I went back to her proportions to make her look like a 5 or 6-year old. Finally there are sketches of different ways to draw her eyes and then costume design for Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer.

I've been using family photos of my sisters and I growing up in the 90's for clothes reference and the compilation of films/styles I put up in my last post for inspiration.

My friend Jess suggested I go with the 'dots for eyes' approach that is used in Winnie-the-Pooh, Lost and Found etc. I particularly liked the 'circular' dot designs in my eye comparison tests, so I tried them out in the next pages to better success I feel. My favourite drawing is the black and white drawing of Amber looking over her shoulder in the top-left corner. She looks very innocent and vulnerable which is what I need so that the audience see her as a relatable little girl who is just ignorant than a mean-spirited one.

The proportions keep changing between drawings as I am used to drawing her older, but I will keep honing this down so that she is about 3 heads tall, like Lilo in Lilo & Stitch (2002).

Finally, my costume changes depending on the seasons. She is not a typical "I Love Pink and Dresses" girl, although I feel a cute dress is appropriate for spring; she will also wear big, bright raincoats; oversized wooly jumpers; and leggings and trousers. Again, these designs aren't final but are tests to see what works best.

Another Rough Animatic

The past week and a half has all gone into redrawing my storyboard from scratch working from my new synopsis and shot list, which has been roughly edited into my third animatic, see below. It's much longer than what I had before (199 drawings instead of 174 and 5:10mins instead of 3:44mins), which will be a problem if I don't cut it down!

I showed it to James Manning yesterday for feedback and we agreed it was an improvement from the previous animatic. The structure makes a lot more sense with the acorns as a device. His main comments was to give the right moments more space, specifically drawing out the ending so that there is enough time for the emotions to play out. The middle montage segment also requires sharper editing so that we don't spend too much time on what's not as important.

James also noticed that the Spirit is not acting "Spirit-like" at the moment and performs so much like a squirrel that it might as well be a squirrel as a metaphor for the spirit instead of a spirit acting as nature. I will consider this as an option, but I did want to express a magical/mystical side to the story and Amber's imagination, so I will also see about making it more spirit-like in movement and design. This is not the final design for the Spirit anyway, but was a temporary solution for my storyboard.

We also spoke about introducing the Spirit into the story first instead of the girl like in my previous animatic as it was a more interesting perspective. I changed it this time around because I thought it would be better to show the ordinary and then the extra-ordinary, but then it might be seen as odd.

I will also need to look at films such as The Sword in the Stone (1963) for their squirrel scenes and begin pre-vis tests in soft, pastel colour like in my animatic.

After seeing James, myself and Jessica Leslau went to Leonie Sharrock's lecture for the MA animation students to show them our animatics. We caught the end of their lecture which was about composition in Cinderella and going from written scripts to visual storyboards. It was similar to a lecture I had in first year, but was more detailed and very interesting.

Jess showed her animatic first; Leonie wanted each of us to play them without preamble, so the MA's had no idea what our stories were about so they could judge them visually as outsiders. The students understood Jess' film about Babbit (http://arabbitcalledbabbit.blogspot.com/) pretty much immediately. There were some film language issues (crossing the line, continuity etc) but these were minor and can easily be addressed.

My film was not as instantly apparent as Babbit, the message (caring for nature, not abusing it) was confused, and I think this is largely because my Spirit reacts differently to Amber's selfishness... sometimes it is angry, other times forgiving and will switch between giving her acorns, having her take them away and reluctantly giving them to her. The Spirit is supposed to give them to her willingly to teach her and is exasperated with her abuse of nature. So that needs to be more obvious.

The characters came across well, the students agreed that Amber needs to be very selfish and greedy but still very young, so the audience sees her as a poor naive girl, rather than a mean one: "Aww bless her".

Finally, the tree needs to definitely be destroyed: completely burned and in pieces, rather than still standing and with leaves still on. I also need to redo my character designs still, playing with style and proportions of Amber to make her more interesting/likeable and the Spirit more spirit-like.

I've been compiling an image of character art and film stills that inspire me for Amber, particularly with younger girl characters that are more like Amber now that she will be 5-6 years old. I found it very difficult to find 5 year old female characters in the leading role of a film or series in Britain. There's Mei in My Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, Aisling in The Secret of Kells, Boo in Monsters Inc., Bonnie in Toy Story 3 and Lilo in Lilo & Stitch, but these are all American, Japanese or Irish so it will be tricky to find a point of reference to make Amber feel more British. Here's the compilation, I'll be using it this week to redesign my style and characters. I'll make another one for my Spirit and for style/colour shortly.

Amber Walk Cycle II

Another walk cycle of Amber in more traditional British clothes inspired from some of my family photos in the 90's. She's still about 9-11 years old here, and I want to make her younger for my film, so perhaps this will be more relevant at the end of the film, but even then she may be younger than this!

I had some difficulty with the back of the dress, I wanted it to drag and float behind her but haven't achieved this at all... I'll need to shoot some reference for that next time.

More tests to come 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.

Character Sketches

I've been drawing more sketches of Amber and the Spirit of the Oak Tree. I'm drawing it like a squirrel at the moment, to see if the playfulness/friendliness of a squirrel shows through to help sell the friendship of the girl and the spirit. I'll be trying fox, owl and wolf spirits as well. I'm still exploring styles for the characters, it's early days still!