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! :)

Storybook Inspiration: Oliver Jeffers

Looked at some children's books in Waterstones yesterday and found some really nice titles that have really good visual inspiration. My film is going to be suitable for and aimed at children, but also needs to be entertaining for older audiences too, so this is a good start for ideas.

"Stuck" By Oliver Jeffers

I was first drawn to this book by the simple tree and colours on the cover, then the visual style of the drawings and words upon looking through the pages. I've ordered the book online so can get some scans for reference soon.

"Lost and Found" by Oliver Jeffers

I find this book very simple in execution, but the unique visual style is too compelling to ignore. It's been made into a 40 minute CGI film by Studio AKA. I hope to watch it soon for inspiration. I would have preferred to see a 2D animation, but the CGI conversion of the designs is quite interesting. They've stripped down the detail which is good to see, but could have been pushed further:

Here is a trailer for the film.

And a great interview of the author in his studio with some of his work:

This is one of the many style inspirations for my film... more to come soon!