Spirit Pencil Test [S017]

Just exported a pencil test for shot 17 from my new animatic when the Spirit hesitates and turns to look back at Amber--the turning point of their first encounter!

I'm using blue Chromacolour pencils for this which I am colouring a warm orange/brown on the computer and applying colour washes to each frame and the background for the final shot. I'm working on this and one other shot for the film for my 'feasibility' study to hand in tomorrow. The aim is to show enough tests and examples of final shots to prove we have what it takes to see the project through to the end!

It didn't take too long to animate and there are some held frames. The tail was proving difficult, especially to give the sense of flow when the Spirit is running. I think this could do with a few fixes but I'm not sure yet if I'll have time to go back and change things!

Apart from animation I've just finished my new animatic with original sound from my composer, Ben Rusch. It took all week to draw and composit and edit the frames, but it's been so exciting to see it finally come together, I'll have it uploaded tomorrow!

In the meantime, I'm off to finish this hand-in work!

Amber Walk Cycle and Spirit Tail Tests

This afternoon I animated a new walk cycle for Amber, as I haven't animated her since her redesign a few weeks ago, so I figured she needed a new walk cycle test. She is now about 5-6 years younger and has different outfits for each season.

I drew her with some new blue Prismacolour pencils I got from Chromacolour recently. I really enjoy the loose feel of these pencils and although blue is usually for key animators to then be drawn afresh on new paper by clean-up artists using lead pencils, I will be colouring my lines an orange/brown colour, so the colour I use to animate will not effect the final look. So I may just draw everything in blue!

I decided to give her baggier and more oversized sleeves from what I drew in my model sheet, I think I prefer it this way and it gives some interesting options for character performance, so I may amend her 'Autumn' design later!

After this, I did some rough key frames of how the Spirit's tail might move (from side-to-side) to give a watery, lava-lamp style. I used a lava-lamp as reference to see how it could break apart and join up again. The first result is not working as well as I hoped, it appears like bubbles as opposed to watery droplets. The second is an improvement, so if I get good feedback on it then I will most likely take it further. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board!

Toon Boom Experimentation

In our last refresher workshop of the year with Stan, we went over the basics of "Toon Boom" as the last time we had used it was back in first year. Toon Boom is great for digital animation and crisp, clean animation. I did a couple of tests in it to see how the 'paint and trace' methods of turning my line art into a vector image would effects my sketches.

These were the images I used:

Adjusting the paint and trace tolerance and settings turned the lines into this:

The vector is useful in that it allows you to enlarge or shrink the artwork without effecting quality, and you can easily drop in colours and gradients that fit perfectly with the edge and without worrying too much about broken lines. However, because it doesn't record the 'greys' and other values in my lines, the result is two-tone and high-contrast which is the opposite of what I want my lines to look like. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the results of the method and think it would make a very unique art style sometime in the future, so I coloured it in too.

Finally, I tried out a simple tail-wag cycle for my Spirit, using only a mouse in Toon Boom, so it is very rough! The tail doesn't move how I want it to in my next animation tests, but it was a fun start for a little workshop exercise.

All-in-all, I enjoyed the program and can see it's benefits, but it's not what I'm after for my final film, so I'll be sticking to pencil and paper and Photoshop.

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!

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!

Walk Cycle Test

This is a walk-cycle animation test I did of Amber for my Pecha Kucha Presentation last Monday. It's a 12-frame cycle (12fps) with very rough keys/in-betweens. I think the side-to-side sway needs more exaggeration and her arm 'pops' a bit on one of the frames, so it will need re-addressing. For now I think it expresses her character, but I will be changing her design in my next drawings. Speaking with other animation students, we agreed that her dungarees give too much of a 90's American film impression, even though I wore dungarees as a child also, I want to make her more British and traditional.



For December's Production Bible deadline, I'll be doing a final revised walk cycle for Amber and an animation test for how she moves within a scene of the film.

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!