Model Sheets - Seasons

For my Production Bible, I drew some more model sheets for the costume/colour changes for my characters over the seasons.

I've changed the colours for "Autumn" slightly and experimented with changing the Spirit's colour for each season. I think "Winter" and "Summer" came out well but I'll try out some extra colour schemes to see what works best between characters and against the background too.

Original uncoloured versions:

 I also coloured in a couple of my sketches as character pictures for my production bible. I particularly like giving Amber primary colours and having the Spirit as the only character who is green and therefore in sync with nature.

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.

Andreas Deja: "Animation's Most Beautiful Squirrel"

This is a bit of a re-blog from Andreas Deja, a key animator for Disney. Last Friday he posted, "Animation's Most Beautiful Squirrel" and I thought I'd post a link to it as there are some really useful key poses and model sheets that he likes to collect of the squirrel from Sleeping Beauty (1959) which is great for me if I continue to make my Spirit more squirrel-like... we shall see!

Click the link to see the original post.

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2011/11/animations-most-beautiful-squirrel.html

Here are some images from the post, the first image is by Tom Oreb, the second model sheet is Milt Kahl (signed off by Eric Larson) and the final one is a inked and painted cel from the film.

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.