Storyboards

We have now finalized a storyboard for the cinematic and figured out some story elements. The girl is now called Tabitha and the robot is called ALBUS (Automated Lifting Bipedal Unit Solution). Surveillance bot is still called Surveillance bot.

To figure out the storyboard we all made a quick one ourselves. We eventually settled with Sophies storyboard. Alex, as part of his Manga Society, will be making a comic based on the storyboard.

Here is the storyboard that I created.

Surveillance bot

As Surveillance Bot will be appearing in the cinematic, I decided to do some more sketches.

House designs

In my Sceneography I wrote about how a Wizard lived on the Island. However, I did not think that it would be obvious to the player that a Wizard lived there. I thought of an idea to combine a traditional wizards hat with the house.

I think this will help communicate with the player and set the mood of the enviroment a lot easier.

Happy Harry Toons

When looking for animation artists I knew it was important to take in a range of styles and practices. When looking for 2-d animation I was reminded by the animations of Harry Partridge.

Harry Partridge is well known for his dark sense of humour and smooth flash animations, he was one of my inspirations to look into 2-d animation and start practising in flash and I personally think his work is great.

His animations often use realistically proportioned characters well drawn and animated very fluidly, something which is very hard to pull off. he also emulates the style of cartoons from the 80's a lot with it's cheesy introductions and kid friendly themes (despite the subject of the cartoons)

Emulating something like this in Maya would be next to impossible at my level of skill, but I will definitely use the same principles of animation that Harry Partridge uses in his animations.

Poem 2 Animating

Since I was the most practiced with animation software, it was my job to animate the character in flash. This provided some unique problems that I had to solve.

We learnt quite quickly that SWFs (Flash's main export) wouldn't work with After Effects. This would mean we would have to use GIF files to get the character into the composition.

Another problem was the lack of transparency in the GIFs. Flash did not have the capabilities of exporting a GIF with a transparent background. We came up with the solution of making the background bright green. This would essentially act like a green screen for us, that we could key out in After Effects.

Finally there was the problem of the length of the GIFs. I began work with the assumption that After Effects would automatically loop a small GIF, this was not the case however. This would mean I had to lengthen the GIF files to play for longer, but even then some problems come up.

Throughout the animation I employed a technique known as boiling. This is where the line of the character is constantly wobbling, even when still. I did this because the most important aspect of animation is movement, so to see something completely still would look wrong. Boiling ensures the animation keeps its energy, even when the character is still.

Overall the character animation took about a week to collectively finish. As it was close to the deadline I rushed some of the later animations, but that is ultimately my own fault.

Poem 2 Ideas

With Poem 1 in the stage of editing, we decided to start on Poem 2. We all agreed before choosing a poem that we wanted to do an animation. We also wanted to do something simpler than our first poem. We all decided to do the poem 'Isolated' by Zenam Bi.

Zenam Bi

Isolated like the emotions I have held for many years.

The cold weighs hard on my bones.

As the dark clouds begin to gather,

quiet surrounds the air.

The rural space echoes with stillness.

The picturesque image engraved in my mind.

Like a single tree embedded in a field,

The wavy grass hangs around to help ease the loneliness it feels.

The sheep wander aimlessly in this desolate sphere. 

This time, we decided to come up with ideas together as a team.

The roles for this poem were changed slightly, Alex would edit the film together, Sophie would provide background illustration and I would do all the character animation.

We wanted to keep the animation as simple as possible, so we decided to have a simple character and keep it black and white. Quite quickly we realized the drawings were similar to the art of Limbo.

The art style is very similar to want we wanted, the character is even similar to one we designed. The feeling of loneliness is quite profound in Limbo, which also fits our film well.

Location Location Location

I needed a location for The Witch-Doctor.  something that suited his rich upbringing but also demonstrated his evil character.

I began looking into mansions and elegant interiors. My plan was to take a very rich mansion and corrupt it with The Witch-Doctor's evil. I looked into haunted mansions and dark areas. Quite fitting considering it is Halloween!

I then produced some quick sketches of what the mansion would look like, also making a quick floor plan for the room.

  

I first made a very quick and rough sketch, mainly to be used as a general guide.

I went over this guide in a a lot more detail and using a cleaner line. This would be useful as I could colour this in very quickly and easily.

I then added the base colours for each element in the room, the majority of the room is white and clean.

I then produced the final piece. Adding more detail in the colours, lighting, rug details, blood splatters and evil smoke comming from cracks in the room. I think this came out alright and suits The Witch-Doctor very well.

 I also made cleaner versions of my floor plans, giving more details on measurements.

Illustrator: It's so Ill!

I am so sorry for that title that is awful oh God I hath sinned.

Anyway, yesterday we had an Adobe Illustrator induction. Illustrator is a lot more simple than Photoshop and I am certainly more comfortable with it than Photoshop. Illustrator shares similarities with Flash; a program I am much more skilled in than Illustrator and Photoshop put together, so working in Illustrator was a lot easier for me.

Unlike Flash, Illustrator has a lot more features when it comes to drawing (hence the name) such as the gradient mesh and the blending tools. This took a little while to getting used to but I managed to get some nice results after a while.

We were drawing using the Pen tool, normally I would use the brush tool with a tablet but we did not have access to any tablets in this induction, the final part of the lesson had us tracing our characters into Illustrator.

I think these turned out quite well, I'm still getting used to using the gradient meshes and some of them look a little clumsy, but i'm sure after a little practice I'll be fine with them.

Once again, I am so sorry for that title, what was I thinking!?

Oo ee oo ah ah...

The Witch-Doctor was my first design idea, marrying tribal masks and hexes with World one clothes, era and sensibilities.

I first started with some sketches of what he would look like, looking at masks form the museums and on the internet, as well as uniforms for him to wear.

Once I figured out what he would look like, I produced a character sheet to further develop his character.

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Name: ‘The Witch-Doctor’

Physical Description

Tall, lanky man. Seems young despite being much older than natural. Wears an African, ceremonial mask covering his entire face, the eyes are completely black, as if light can’t penetrate through. Wears a formal military uniform/immaculate suit.  Thin build, seems physically weak. An ‘evil’ aura occasionally covers him, sometimes emits a smoke from his entire body. Holds an ornate staff, a ceremonial dagger and a briefcase

Character Traits

Born in the 1600’s, The Witch-Doctor’ has extended his life unnaturally with magic and potions. Cold and calculating, likes to manipulate people into doing things for him. An ‘Evil’ man and he knows it, uses it to his advantage. Always well spoken, knows exactly what to say, calluses himself as a ‘professional’. Utilises magic, uses a variety of ’dark’ spells, ‘necromancy’, ‘death’ spells etc. Can create cauldrons at will to craft potions. Uses a combination of magic and contemporary ingredients (E.G wing of bat and Cyanide).

Character Background
Family Background	Habits / Vices
Family not important to him. Abandoned his birth name for ‘The Witch-Doctor’. Born in a rich family, which regularly took expeditions to Africa.	Enjoys experimenting with new combinations of potions and new spells. Uses people as live test subjects. Enjoys wearing formalwear such as suits, tuxedoes and formal military-wear.
Education	Personality
Comes from and rich background with private schooling. He is very well spoken and keeps up to date with the latest in education. Has been constantly reading books throughout his unnaturally long life. Likes to rub his superior intellect into other people’s faces.	A very selfish and cruel man. Despite committing horrible crimes with evil magic, he is very polite and well spoken, never directly showing emotions. Very snobbish, looks down on everyone as ‘inferior’ people. Basically a total jerk.
Likes	Dislikes
Magic, potions, becoming more powerful, Formal suits and military-wear, Exotic cocktails	Heroes, anti-magic equipment, guns, informal clothes, olives

Motivation
What is their Goal?	Their plan to achieve Goal
The Witch-Doctor wishes to become more powerful and ultimately immortal, he also wants to have a good time while doing it (his idea of ‘fun’ is screwing other people over)	Scouring the world for unique magical artefacts and experimenting with different ingredients to make new potions.

Additional info:

·    The Witch-Doctor acquired his mask deep in the jungles of Mexico, which he stole from an ancient tribe. The mask, embodied with evil magic, began his rise to power.

·    The Witch-Doctor speaks with a posh British accent

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Once I had a good idea of what kind of character The Witch-Doctor is, I made a mood board for further  inspiration.

 

As you can see, I researched a lot in both African masks  and contemporary suits and military uniforms.

After that I began producing some vector graphics using a tablet.

  

 

I am still doing designs so The Witch-Doctor may change in the final piece, or I may use a completely different character! Only time will tell.