Under the Weather

A group project for Pre-Production, we were given the words: Talent show (Britains Got Talent/X Factor) and under the weather (a phrase).

So, we made up a little plot, our main character is in purgatory, the 'tween' of afterlife for the undecided. He's given a leaflet advertising a talent show called 'Under the Weather', and only after showing up does he realise that he will have to perform for his afterlife. He is judged by various gods (including Anubis, 'God' and Buddah) on his 'talents', and after being tormented by various extreme weather (induced by the gods) and the leers of the demonic looking audience, Buddah finally finds him amusing enough to send to his version of heaven.

It'll be a rather abstract piece, with little dialogue. We estimate it will be about 2 minutes long in total (maybe a little less). Heres the animatic I made (storyboard drawn by Beverly) before I handed it off to Char (Charlotte) for final editing and sound.

The feedback so far has been to have our little guy actually do something, like a dance, at the end to win Buddah over (cause getting fried just isn't enough) and to make his reactions to the changes in weather a little more extreme when (if) we actually animate.

Overall, it had a good reception! Also, we had to draw out one of the characters for another pre-production lecture, and I gotta be honest, it's given me ideas, no telling just yet but I may try and make a prequal based on this guy.....

Funny in 15 seconds

We were put into groups with other random people and told to make a short animation that'd make you laugh. Its only limitation? The animation has to be 15 seconds long.

Making something funny in 15 secs is hard, as in, painfully hard. You'd think it'd be simple but, well...its not.

In the end as a short the group agreed on making some characters on screen laugh (yes, we borrowed the idea from Despicable Me 2). We were given some feedback and in the end chose to change the idea to an army of something you wouldn't expect to break out into a fit of giggles.

We chose an army of killer robots.

Heres the initial animatic I made. I didn't add any details to the 'robots' at this point as the idea still needed approval and refinement.

I used free soundclips off the internet as well as some sound clips from the minion trailers off Despicable Me to give it the tone the group were after.

Since then, I designed the robots (a mixture of robots from Mass Effect, Portal, and R2D2) to get this:

Then I had to duplicate it onto seperate layers for a close up shot....

And then 25 layers later.... I had an army. I also detatched the heads of the first five layers onto seperate layers to make it easier for another member of our group to animate.

Thats... all I got for now, next step, animating and recording our own vocals.

Comission Number 2: People love the 2nd years...

Got a comission from another second year, Josh, working on his project titled 'My Pet Rock' (its brilliant).

Problem is, I was asked to try and make a car interior. I don't like drawing cars. Or cars interiors. But, I saw this as a chance to try for the sake of practise. And man...was it practise. I cannot replicate Josh's style either, hence why I've stuck with this just being a concept piece.

Personally, I feel rather impressed with the cars dimensions and the interiors perspective, however, my shading and attempt at a more 'soft cartoon' style had taken away from the technical details I spent hours pouring over..... theres a lesson to be learned, stick with what you know when trying new things, then try adding a style. Least I have less hatred for drawing car innards...

Back in Action!

I'm back! Summer consisted of relocating all my worldly possessions from home to another place. Moving is evil. And tedious, and mind numbing... did I mention evil?

Anyway, term is in full swing and I've already got myself stuck in. I have a deviantart page up and running (yay) which I'm gonna do my best to keep up to date. It won't have just sketches or animatic shots though, I'll be posting all my other arts and crafts hobby projects up too.

My deviantart account: http://lokiisecretspyrofan.deviantart.com/

SO! Since coming back to uni I've gotten the same cold three times (new record), and made friends with the third years in the same flat. I even made a concept piece for Connor McKee's project pitch 'Worlds Away'.

I started out with some sketches to try and get some variation, so he could pick and choose which sort of thing he preferred most.

Concept 1:

Concept 2:

Concept 3:

Final Concept:

Final Concept on Photoshop (shaded for better foreground/background contrast):

Final Concept art:

The 'brief' was to make a cityscape to contrast with the softer natural forest/jungle scenes, so sharp, jagged points, dark tones and shadows, crowded atmosphere, as well as a more sunset fiery colour pallet. The main focus had to be a landing pad with mutliple exits, so in my piece I had the 'tunnels' and wiring beneath the landing pad lit up to draw the viewers eye to that section of the screen, while leaving enough space to fit in what I feel is a real cityscape skyline to contrast with the yellowish sky. I tried to make it seem like the main points of the city were built into immense industrial chimneys, with accomodations and other buldings built into the sides.

Overall I was extremely happy with the shapes, tone and overall atmosphere I achieved with this piece.