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! :)

Rough Animatic V4

I've edited my animatic down some more by removing drawings and replacing some others. I managed to take off 45 seconds, not bad but I still need to work on it!

I did some calculations for the amount of drawing work I would need to do for 4 minutes of animation.

4 minutes = 240 seconds @ 12fps = 2,880 frames

Over the course of four months (Jan-April)
720 frames per month
180 frames per week
36 frames per day (Mon-Fri) or 3 seconds per day

I find this reasonable as I was animating 40-60 frames per day for my last project which was just over  1,200 frames altogether, and I only had a month to do that in, so I'm fairly confident that I can do it, especially as some of my shots are long but without movement but I will still do my best to cut down the running time.

My friends gave me some feedback on how to cut it down quickly by having some actions happen in the same shot and taking some unnecessary ones out too, so I'm working on that now to get it as short as possible. I feel it's getting there though!

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.

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!

Summer Ideas

Over Summer I had several ideas for the film I wanted to pursue before I settled on "Great Trees from Little Acorns Grow" (Working Title). First, I would like to surmise my aims and goals for this coming year.

My Final Film will be very important to me, it will be the first narrative-based piece of fully animated work that I have created. I have made half-and-half film/animation before, abstract animation and animation snippets and some animatics, but not to the scale I want this to be.

My main goals for this film are:

• Entertaining characters and story
• Personal meaning to me
• Fun to work on so that I can stay enthusiastic/passionate about it
• Makes a statement that appeals to my demographic
• Displays my abilities as a character animator, designer and storyteller to interest potential employers

To begin with, my issue was not coming up with enough ideas, the problem is coming up with the right idea.

After writing a couple of shorts that would work well as storybook animatic videos (but not my final film) I came up with a short animation idea about the creation of Earth, but from the perspective of twin creation students (or Gods-in-training). One (sister) is creative and passionate, while the other (brother) is wise and logical, so, naturally, they bicker and everything goes wrong. I also dabbled with the prospect of them creating humanity too, but eventually I decided against this one as the characters just aren't involving enough. Perhaps I will reattempt it at a later date.

Michelangelo's Adam and God

It would have been a part Science-Fiction, part Creationist take on the creation of the Universe, taking inspiration from Greek myths, but in the end it just wasn't that personal to me.
After this, I watched a DVD of Pixar shorts with the Director commentary on to discover the creative decisions behind the shorts and also their meaning. I wrote a list of what I thought each short was trying to say, for example, For the Birds is about the injustice of bullying and peer pressure where the bullies get their comeuppance and Day and Night is about envy (the grass is always greener on the other side) but also reconciling your differences with one another. After this I wrote a list of my own messages that I want to say, such as self-acceptance and letting go.

Eventually I realised that the kind of story that would most connect with me and my intended audience would be a sentimental one. I'm a very nostalgic person and the loss of treasured possessions or even friends means a lot to me, which is why films like Pixar's Up and Toy Story 3 get me very emotional. Thus, I wrote a story that is centered around the sentimentality of youth and the loss of something/someone dear. Here is an image illustrating  three of my ideas following my "Creation Students" story. 

• The first, Princess-in-Waiting is all about a short-tempered Princess who is fed up of waiting for her Prince so she travels on her very own pet dragon to seek Mr. "Charming" for her revenge! She's a modern, independent girl who much prefers black glasses and leather jackets to her embroidered dress and tiara! It's a bit of a joke short as just when she thinks she gets what she wants (peace and quiet) suddenly there are Prince Charming's everywhere, all desperate for her hand in marriage. So this is a fun short, but it's not particularly personal to me and a little too "Shrek-like" for my liking, so it's more of a back-up

• Second is an untitled film where I was thinking about self-acceptance through physically destroying your inner demons. This would take place in a surreal world, perhaps in this girl's mind, where she has trapped herself with her own thoughts and fears. I thought a series of trials would be interesting to see her tackle them in different ways until she at last realises the answer lies in eliminating the negative aspects of her personality, rather than killing the demons her mind has conjured around her. Not a lot of development on this one, but might be interesting at some point to do a crazy Alice in Wonderland/Labyrinth style tale.

• "Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow" or "The Girl Who Won't Grow Up". This is my favourite story so far as it's personal and has an emotional character arc. It's about a little girl, Amber, who grows up in and around this majestic oak tree, it's got a tree house, a swing and her friends would go there to play. We see snapshots of her life as she grows up, but she remains as childish as when she was young. It's gonna be all about growing up, letting go and moving on, but in an emotional and maybe touching/heartwarming way if done right.

I also had an idea about a lone traveling nomad but I think that's a film for another time. The rest of this production blog will cover my development on my final idea, "Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow".

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