Found this...

This is really just a quick post, meant especially for the other members of my group.

I found this http://www.boneart.co.nz/meanings.htm website, which should be very useful. It has all the meanings behind the symbols. I think we could very easily incorporate a lot of this information.

And now, I should probably actually blog a bit.

Because I've got previous experience with InDesign, the creation of the book has largely fallen to me. I don't really mind though; it's been a while since I used the program, and its pretty fun.

We've also got pretty rough designs for most of the characters now, and have loosely each been assigned characters to develop further; pretty much the ones that we've been the most successful at getting to a finished stage already.

I've got the boatman, the queen, and the devil. We've finally got the devil to a level where we're all pretty much in agreement about him. We did a bit of research into maori devils (or Taniwha, which we're now referring to him as) and that helped a lot to take him in the right direction.

I've also spent the last half hour looking up maori words to help with naming our characters. So now, instead of referring to our hero as simply 'the luck child' we can call him Angitu which means lucky or successful.

And this children, is called an update...

This blog has been needing an update for a while, and now, I finally deliver...

I got my animatic handed in on time. It required two days of solid, non-stop work, and a rather substantial argument between my scanner and myself, but it happened. Wow, it really does make it seem like a long time since I've posted if I still had to talk about the animatic...

A lot has happened with our group project, but first of all, I would like to take a moment to reflect on that which was lost very early on in the project; namely, Kick-arse Red Riding Hood. This was an idea that we came up with before we were seperated into different groups. It was decided that the concept was getting too far away from the original for the purposes of this project though, so it was scrapped.

This is Red. Say hi Red! Her job is to protect the now desolate Earth against the invading alien enemy, which happen to look a lot like wolves.


This is her boss, Nana (her codename). We won't mention the debate about whether or not Nana should be showing her knees. (Yes, her knees... Ignore the fact that her breasts aren't really covered.)
























At one stage we had an acronym for GRANDMA, which became the name of the organisation Red worked for. There was also a bulky guy known as Mum, an axe wielding guy named Hunter and mutant wolves from outer space.

Even though nothing happened with it for this assignment, Caryn and I are discussing doing something with this concept for a final year, (or something else) animation. GRANDMA shall rise again!




Have I mentioned the fact that I love art books? Well, now I have. Stacey was lucky to walk away with her Treasure Planet art book still in tact last Wednesday. So pretty! I've already gushed about Treasure Planet however, so I shall hold back for the time being.

Back on topic, it's now time for pictures! They have relevance too. :)

We decided early on that the princess in our story (there's always a princess in these stories. Always...) wasn't going to be a typical Disney (sorry, have nothing against Disney, but it does get a little predictable) princess. We ended up deciding that she would be a warrior princess. Here are some early designs...

The top left is my favorite, I think. It's also the drawing that took us in a certain direction as far as her physical design goes; things like dress etc. came later. Now though I think we're going for straighter hair. The other two are just experimenting with costume design.

We've got her pretty well under control.











Next up is the boatman. We did a few drawings of the boatman looking a little more normal, and a couple of him with facial hair, but at the moment we're leaning towards something a little more like this...

He doesn't look too healthy, does he? Well, you wouldn't either if you spent all of your days ferrying people across a river (possibly of lava) in a cave (no sunlight) with very little to eat. Poor boatman...

I'm really becoming attached to the boatman and his design now though, which is odd; he's not exactly the sort of character that I would have thought I would enjoy designing, but I am.







Here's a couple of sketches of possible designs for the devil's grandma. (Yes, he has a grandma.) We're still working on her.















































And now on to the devil.

I could possibly write an entire post on the devil's design and all of the phases and debates that have centered around him, but I won't; at least, not now. For a title character, he's not in the story for very long, and for a character that's not in it very long, he's sure created a lot of problems.

At the moment, we're thinking that the devil's powers will come from a mask (hence the one he's holding in the picture on the right). The mask would transform both his face and his body, giving the devil the fearsome appearance that he's renowned for in all the surrounding villages, but when he returns to dear old grandma, the mask comes off and he looks a little more normal. This was the result of a compromise as to whether the devil would be good-looking or completely monstrous. I think at the moment we're still deciding whether or not he'll have black (ridiculously, like blue-black) or normal coloured skin.


And now, to put a little bit of colour into this post, I leave you with a random picture of a city from Gankutsuou; a gorgeously designed anime based on The Count of Monte Cristo. Beautifully designed, and worth checking out, if only for the 'shiny' factor.

Wow. It's an update...

I had great plans to get a ridiculously large amount of work done over the Easter Break. However, they were viciously thwarted by a six-ear-old by the name of Seth, my nephew, who I ended up babysitting for a week. I did get some work done (read; about two hours after Seth was asleep) but not nearly enough. Consequently I've spent any free time over the past couple of days working on the storyboard, and I still haven't reached the stage that I can turn it into an animatic.

Too much sugar on Monday inspired quite possibly the most twisted, random, fractured fairytale that has ever been conceptualized. Little Red Riding Hood, except futuristic, a ninja, and with mutant wolves from out of space. When we were broken up in to groups though we decided to throw that idea away for now, because quite honestly, it had broken so far away from the original story that it didn't really fit the criteria for the assignment any more. It might be a good idea for a final year film though. I might post a couple of the concepts next post, because I'm quite proud of Red and the wolves.

Our group (ninjas!) chose a story today; The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs. It's very long, and there are a lot of characters and locations to design, but it gives us a lot of options and potential for coming up with some really great designs. We've decided on a Polynesian/Islander theme, with a mixture of bright, beach atmosphere, and darker, voodoo-inspired stuff.

Well, going back to working on my storyboards now.

Too much playing of video games on the weekend prompted me to look up some of the conceptual artwork behind a couple of my favorite games. They're both oddities to a certain extent; The 'Jak' series and the 'Ratchet and Clank' series. They've both got a really interesting cartoon look to them with a lot of exaggeration and stretch and squash (especially for games) but they're both also fairly violent, despite the cartoonish look. I was surprised by the amount of information I found out about the preproduction process for Ratchet.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030613/price_pfv.htm (This is a very good article written by one of the games' developers about the design process. It's also funny how the two games that I mentioned above actually have somewhat of an overlap in the design process, as the two studios behind the games - Naughty Dog and Insomniac, actually collaborated somewhat on some of the technology.)

The pictures on the left are some of the earliest designs for Ratchet. None of them are quite like how he turned out, but they're pretty close. And the one on the right is actually quite an annoying character, but I really like the sketchy line work.

But before you ask, the weekend wasn't all playing games. Since last Wednesday I have broken down my chosen section of script and created very quick, sketchy designs for most of the environments and the characters. I have to say though, that there is going to be a lot more storyboard panels than I thought. That might just be because I've chosen to do a lot of cuts though. I think it should be fairly good however, even if it will be a lot of work.

Well, as far as class goes I've chosen to do the first segment of the script. I've also got a few rough sketches for the characters done, but have yet to actually start any serious storyboarding apart from a couple of thumbnails.

After my last post the exploration of Treasure Planet pre-production continued, until I found the portfolio of one Craig Elliot. He had some incredibly nice preproduction backgrounds, like the one above, but you really have to wonder if he thought something like this (left) would ever make it into the movie. LOL. Just had to share that.

I also found 'The Art of Anastasia' in the library. I always loved that movie when I was younger, but recently I haven't been able to stand the singing and the rather poorly developed characters, even though there is some rather nice banter. Looking back however, the production design is excellent. There's one scene in Paris near the end in which all of the backgrounds are painted like Impressionist classics. It's really different.

Maybe I can find a picture... Nope. Not a single one in Paris. It's a shame really. Here's a nice one of the movie's blending of 2D and 3D however, which is absolutely excellent for when it was made.

Bye for now. Julie-Anne

Argh! I have been so shockingly slack with this blogger so far. Oh well, it means that I have a lot of things to post about right now. I will skip Oprah references etc (althought that really made me smile) to talk about things that I've done outside of class, because, well, everyone sat through the Oprah example.

There is one thing that I'd like to say about class though. Watching the video with the photorealistic drawing demonstration was good, but after a while it was tiring, and he didn't really explain anything that he was doing. There were so many times when I wanted to know what tool he was using, or look at his layers etc. Oh well.

Here are the thumbnails for the pub that I was talking about last post.




















And the finished drawing...


I got the Slither script breakdown done a couple of days after class, but I was pretty lazy with the Strangers on a Train one. I didn't do it until the night before. I did get it done though, and I suppose that's what really matters.

I've also been doing a lot of looking at Pre-production over the past couple of weeks. I had a look at the art of Kingdom Hearts, borrowed temporarily from Stacey. -Waves- Thanks Stacey! It's really quite incredible. The creativity that has gone into designing the Heartless is awesome, and it's really impressive how they've managed to combine both Disney and Final Fantasy characters and made it work.

One thing I really noticed with it though was that many of the original illustrations had a lot more expression and personality than the final 3D models.

I also explored the behind the scenes of my Treasure Planet DVD, originally looking for information on the sound for a sound design assignment, but instead finding a lot about the design and preproduction. I don't like that much Disney stuff to be honest, but the design and art of Treasure Planet is fantastic. In the extras they briefly talked about their design philosophy for the film 70% old and 30% new. I've found a few pictures on the web. They'll explain themselves better than I will able to with words.

This is a great page. Lot's of Treasure Planet pictures...

http://animationarchive.net/Feature%20Films/Treasure%20Planet/Model%20Sheets/index.php

It's fun to see some of the designs that didn't make it. Like the one on the right for example. Hehehe.

I've also got some character designs that I'm rather proud of, which I made for 2D. Basically they're just high school students (although I'm pretty sure they're psychotic). Unfortunately I can't post them because they're in swf format, but I will once I work out how.

Bye for now...

The Blogging Begins

Well, this being my first post, I've actually got two weeks worth of things to talk about, so it's probably going to be long; that is, as long as I can actually remember everything that happened in week one. Dinosaurs; yes, I distinctly remember the dinosaurs, which was incredibly interesting to watch, especially considering that I can't draw dinosaurs very well.

Hmmm..... what else happened in week one. I suppose this says more about how shocking my memory skills are than anything else.

Oh yes; inn research. But before I get to that, I would like to say how much I loved the Grimm's Fairy Tale that was picked out for us. I read the entire thing, getting very excited by the prospect of designing a lot of the things in it (cat's eyes! He has cat's eyes!) only to become very disappointed by the fact that we were only going to be designing the inn. Oh well. I suppose it's actually better to get used to designing the boring stuff. So yes.

Inn research. We discovered a few little gems on the internet, except that as try as hard as I might, I can't find the same sites as we did in class. As I think someone mentioned in our second class however, most of what we found had a lot of external shots, but not much interior.

I tried to draw some thumbnails in class, but I was completely lacking in inspiration, so they were pretty terrible.

For more research I watched 'The Brother's Grimm', and then, a few days later (ie; the night before our next class -_-;) sat down and found inspiration in of all things, the not quite as appropriate as aforementioned sources, 'The Village', and came up with rather nice result which I shall have to post the next time I'm on a computer with a scanner.

The second class was extremely useful; lot's of information about colour-coding etc. that I will have to remember. The instructional video this time around was good, but after a while it got a little tiring. Plus I really would have liked to know more about some of the tools he was using instead of just watching him do it. For example, I think he might have been using the burn tool as one stage but I couldn't be sure.

As far as the excercise for last week goes, I have it downloaded and waiting for me to do it at home, so I'll post again once I've got more time. Class it about to start.

-Ciao, Jewels