Another background

After doing the concepts for all the scenes we combined these with the groups work and pulled what everyone had done together. I would put the concepts up on here but they are in CYMK format so the colours are all wrong and I cant edit them of this laptop. The above is one of the quick sketches I did on photoshop after the initial concepts as I tried to work out an interesting landscape that depicted Hayle in a morbid way. I started taking aspects from Hayle town itself from visists and photos of the place. There is the Hayle river that runs through the town with the bridges and also the church I thought would give it more of a mark as a place. I did't use these sketchs but it was one that led into the further backgrounds. At the time I was going for a camera movement through Hayle town to come to focus on the bench itself with Winnie on it but I soon changed my mind on that idea. (Above right - a concept idea for the sea scene)

I finally worked up a Final background and colour pallette for both the scenes, this was the final background at the time for the final scene.

Initial Conceptual Designs

I spend a while looking at various work and started on trying to depict the first and final scenes to get the contrast right. I wanted the first scene to be extremely morbid and to perceive Hayle as a complete polar to how Winnie saw it. I looked at characturizing the scenes to do this. The houses had to have character so did any trees. For the initial concepts of these 2 I drew out loads of different settings but all focussed around a bench from which Winnie would be reminising from. The above are some of the inspiration for the morbid scene.

Some Character Designs

At the beginning of the project I had a doodle for some characters that kind of characturised me, it varied from being slightly dozy to bright and cheerful. Its one of my favourite parts of animation. Character design is really hard to keep simple but be effective. I don't think I have a natural talent in it but It is really fun.

Epic Blogging session Begins

Should have done this as I went along , would have been quite useful in hindsight but I was more focussed on doing it as opposed to procrastinating and putting down what I have done anyway its so long ago this should be interesting.

In the beginning......

We put together our groups in a random order. At the time I had no idea what our group was going to be like and how it was going to work, we were all kind of pre production people which was a bit of an error as it made delegating roles and keeping everyone happy more of a challenge. Initially we sat down and picked our favourite 3 sound bites each and then made a final decision. Winnie was our sound of choice with her charismatic and batty approach and we focussed in on No Holiday. It was hugely important I felt to get a immense amount of character into her animation as she was such a funny little character. Above are the initial illustrations I was looking at. I was really keen for it to be sketchy and quirky as was Steph. Joliffe and Jess wanted different things. I then went back to the conceptual side and started to look at further images. I knew though that I wanted the animation to be lively, quirky, fun and colourful. Nothing over the top just a cool style that would be fitting with Winnies sound.

Rain Attempts

Overthought....

Haven't blogged all my stuff for a while and really should have as it would have been good to see my thoughts in order as they occured but ah well, I'll go back to them at the end of the project and try and explain my trail of thoughts. At the moment I just need to get out the frustration.

Ok so at the moment we have Tuesday, Wed , Thurs to pull this all together. We have all the scenes as a basic. The backgrounds however I have decided apart from the rugby one dont look coherent enough with Winnie herself. This is because it would take to long to colour Winnie in the same style as the backgrounds I think. Its my bad as I should have done an animation test earlier instead of just a concept still. Either way right now I'm animating rain for the first scene. Literally its pissing me off no end. I did a short simple version to get the idea of how to do it. I then did a new version of it last night to only decide at the end of it through being wound up about it to delete it. I'm still glad I did this as it wasn't good enough for the scene. I'm currently workign on it again but going backwards. I need to sit down, take my time and think carefully instead of just trying to bang it out and spending ages doing it but rushing and trying to re correct at the same time. If I dont do it by tomorrow I'm letting the group down. If I do do it I'll still be annoyed because the backgrounds still wont be completly coherent with the animation. If the animation doesnt look aestheticaly slick I will be pissed off no end. It will be my fault as well being producer with the final look in my hand. I'm just worried it will look tacky. The group have been fantastic so far with Steph working endlessly on the colouring and the first and last scene animations. James has produced the most dynamic and characturzing animations which are so much better than anything I could have done. Jollife has produced the sea scene entirely himself I had worries it might look a bit to different from the other scenes but it looks amazing and is so slick. 1st thing to do is this rain , I want the first scene together animated and looking swweeet , that will then flow in the second rugby scene easily and then into the cricket. Then that will just leave the final scene. I just have to get the first and last scene changed again to suit Winnie. I've messed around with these scenes so many times I'm pretty sure my mind is just clogged now and isn't thinking straight about them.