more character design..

ive been focusing on finalizing my robot all day, as its really been holding me back. ive eventually got it to a place i sort of like, although i think more physical wear and tear needs to be added. i have to be careful with that though because i really dont want to spend ages on tiny little details.

as it is now, im confident i could build and rig him and could happily animate my characters and tell my story with him as it is now as a design.

im not a character designer, i try my best, but i dont really enjoy it. having said that i think these are the best ive done as they are now, and thats ok with me. i need to explore how they will move, and get some poses in there to really understand their shape now.

So here he is!

I been editing and tweaking my basica idea all day, and ended up shifting a lot of it around in photoshop. and yes i cheated by flipping half of my drawing so it was symmetrical.

colouring it in for two different time periods really helped, as it was much easier to age something once i knew what it looked like new. i tried to tell a story with where the rust is... how water might drip and dust collect in places.

so, its 4am, and i need some sleep! tommorrows goal is a FINISHED storyboard, edited and with enough frames that i can get a decent animatic done.

ta-rar!

Character design...

...is something im really not good at, or enjoy. for this project i want to crack it, because it holds me back in everything i do. you've already seen the bird, which still needs a bit of tweaking, but is close to what i want.

When it comes to the robot, who im calling Joe for now (maybe Joe-bot) my biggest issue is the fact that im terrible at drawing anything in perspective. i still try, and i can still work out an idea, but sometimes i just want to see something i cant draw.

ive been doing many sketches of his head, to try and figure out where i want to take it. its definatly going down an art deco route, but i want to keep it as simple as possible. last night while sketching i think i cracked it, so this morning, based on that idea, using 2 toilet roll tubes and various blue peter skills, i made this.



This has been incredibly useful. for a start, i can see it from any angle for reference. its not my final design, but it'll be close. its also poseable, so the jaw and eyebrows move, meaning i can see just how much expression i can get out of rigid structure. this has been especially helpful because one of the big questions i was facing was how i design a character made out of metal that needs to express like a human. how far can i bend metal before it stops looking like metal?

through the above photos ive decided my best approach will be to keep the jaw rigid, but manipulate the top lip line however i need to. through this system i think i can make any mouth movment i need to, or something close to it. but it definatly will be a rig designed for expressing, not for talking.

i also decided on how to do the eye brows, as they pretty much need to be outside of the eye itself to work. eyebrows on stalks seems to be the way to go.

his body is still in development.



im getting somewhere, but it still needs work. i need to keep it simple and make the lines work for many angles.

so, we shall see! i want to get these designs pretty much finished by the weekend, and the storyboard done too... thats been bugging me a bit, mainly because i want to know the rough character design.

the quest continues!

Doing Doodles

Well, a bit more than doodles.

this week (offically week 16) ive been up to lots of different things, which is as it should be really.

First of all, getting my proposal sorted was key. it was frustrating, but it did help me define exactly what i want to make. its was hard, and its still not entirely finished, but its sort of there. the hard bit now is just remembering to hit the marks that ive said i am going to. getting some help off nicola from last year helped, to understand just how much detail is required.

One cool thing i did this week was email Ed Hooks my script.

Ed wrote this book:


Its a pretty damn fantastic book for understanding the motivations of your characters. he covers a lot of stuff in it. Hes worked with Pixar, Valve and Dreamworks and loads of other people. really great guy to talk stories through, because it all plays into the whole piece.

whats even better is hearing him talk, which i got to do at animex a few years back. i took a dozen pages of notes that day. addmittidly most of it is in the book, but hearing the guy himself really makes it sink in.

Well, i emailed him my script. and to my suprise, he got back to me within a day! so instead of transcribing it, ill show it.

Hey Andrew -

It is good to hear from you. You caught me in the middle of a Chicago snow storm.

I like your script, partly because I have been attracted to scare crows and robots ever since "The Wizard of Oz". You have sort of combined the two.

Couple of notes:

After the bird flips the bucket over on itself, the robot picks up his eye and heads back to his chain in the ground. You are describing -- with words -- a moment of abstract thought when you say that he sees the chain and realizes what is implied by being chained up. At which point he goes back and frees the bird. I think you should tell that moment with pictures. The robot sees the chain and stops in his tracks. He looks back at the chirping bucket. He looks back at the chain. He looks again at the bucket, the chirp getting dimmer, the bucket jumping less. He looks again at the chain. Close-up on robot's face at his moment of decision. Cut back to the bucket -- maybe a medium close shot -- the robot approaches and lifts the bucket, freeing the bird.

I think also the bird should not immediately know what is up. The bird and the robot need to exchange glances so that the robot's intention is clear. I mean, when the bucket is lifted off the bird, the bird might reasonably presum e he is about to be cooked over an open fire or something.

The ending works, but you need to have a bird or two get spooked off, so that you are ending with the same sort of scene you opened with. It might be overly clever, but you might consider affixing some kind of movable face on the bucket/face, maybe with a long string that can be controlled by the robot who is now sitting with the bird. Another bird lands near the bucket/spade, the robot pulls the string, causing the face on the bucket to say "Boo!" and the bird flies off. Maybe. I'm not positive about this. I'm simply remembering that, in the opening, the bird does not run away until the robot says "Boo!" Screenplay structure is strongest when the final scene is very much like the opening scene.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Thanks for sharing with me. Maybe I'll see you next month. I WILL be at Animex.

Pretty damn good really! some nice advice, which im gonna work into my storyboard.

talking of that, ive decided not to rewrite my script. any changes will be put into the storyboard instead. works for pixar, so it works for me. im trying to get to the pioint where i can storyboard, which is hopefully days away. tommorrow i hope.

Concepty stuff!

ive been doing character concept for a while now, and a few other things for this. i find drawing a hard thing to do. but ive been pushing through, getting it done. i want it to be great, which is hard. ive never enjoyed drawing.

but, i had an idea in my head. and its led to th is piece which i really like.

Colourwise at least it hits what i see in my head. which is great. i love seeing something that ive only seen in my head up until that point. it might look like that eventually, it might now, but it with this as a starting point, i know im going in the right direction.

Ive been working on the bird.... and it drove me nuts. it honestly feels like i dont wanna talk about it.

ever noticed how birds are never a big part of animation? theres only really Valiant, and that wasnt great.

anyway, ive eventually come up with this.



that took a lot of work to get that.... and its not finished. but its the direction i want to take, i like it. it works, he looks cheeky. ive been trying to decide how realistic the bird needs to be, and i think this is a good direction to go in.

im still workingo n the robot. its all over the place to be honest. ive been doing a lot of moodboards and research, to get this how i want. research is the key!so im thinking art deco. art deco is the key.

theres a few other bits ive been doing to keep moving forward with this. im happy with where i am, id just like to get storyboarding.

later! time for bed!

A quick catch up

OK, well the best place to start is the start. this week in fact.

although many bits and pieces were in place before that.

I knew roughly what the final project would be last year, when last years 3rd year were going through it, so its been something Ive been pondering for a while. Even back then i knew exactly what i wanted this project to be. I had to be full character animation, that above all else, told a story. so, i knew what step one was. Find a story to tell.

now, that's not really an easy thing, and I'm glad i gave myself virtually 6 months to get something i was happy with. At first i had an idea for a little romantic tale about an old man, standing outside a cake shop, in love with the owner but never having the courage to do anything about it. it was a nice little story, but had some problems in the middle, and would have defiantly come under the banner of mini epic.

Then i had an idea about a projectionist in a old cinema, showing classics from the silent film era, when one night, a character is missing from a film, escaped and is hiding in the projection booth. again, a nice story, and playing on my love of all things Chaplin, but overall, again, too epic.

While we're on this subject, the best book for this kind of story development is easily this:



Click it, I've linked the amazon page. Its a fantastic book, lots of first hand stuff, great reading. one of those books that states the obvious point that you always forget to remember.

Anyway, then i saw this.

Its called 'The bird and the droid' by an artist called Richard 'James Johnson', and well, wow. I first saw it on a postcard that id picked up in a cinema, and straight away it spoke to me. id had a robot story in my head for a while, but nothing concrete. till i saw that. It wasn't so much a visual inspiration, but more attitude.... the idea of a lonely robot, not understanding his purpose in existence, contrasted with something as simple as a bird, who just exists, and is entirely happy with his life. this image just spoke to me, got gears moving and ideas crunching.

and a few days later i was throwing a very rough story around.

VERY ROUGH.

and not very good.

In fact, ill say it, it was shit.

It went on and on about the purpose of existence and the sacrifice of life for another being something greater than life itself. it was seriously deep. and needed a back story to make any kind of sense. it would have been about 15 minutes long, visually incredibly complex, and ended on a massive downer. it had problems.

i worked on it, got something passable, showed it to friends got advice.

And then showed my sister.

My sister is my harshest critic. she will happily rip anything i do to shreds within seconds if it doesn't work. not out of spite or hate or anything like that, but just out of truth. and it works every bloody time even though its really hard to go through.

And she did. big time.

So i started again.

And weirdly, almost straight away, i came up with something pretty close to what i have now. A few tweaks have been made, smoothing out of elements, simplifying of the landscape, cutting for time, but essentially, its the same.

SO! MY STORY IS...(drum roll...)

...called Scarecrow... for now. Its a story, set in the future, about an old robot that used to help out on a farm, but has now been relegated to scarecrow duty thanks to technology moving on. and hes been doing it a long time. so long in fact that this farm no longer has inhabitants. just a broken down house and overgrown fields. and birds. lots of birds. and after so long even a robot learns how to be bored.

I'm not going to tell the whole story (don't hit me) but the general idea is that one bird isn't scared of the robot, and steals a very important part of him -his eye. The robot gives chase, the bird makes fun, but eventually, the bird learns a lesson, as does the robot.

without trying to sound cheesy, its a story about freedom.

i think that's enough for now. There's artwork to be posted, and ideas to be shared, and it will follow soon.

thanks for reading! hope you made it to the end!

and here we go.

What a brilliant idea. I'll explain.

Im supposed to be keeping a journal for my final major project of my animation course, which for me is... difficult. mainly because i tend to think about things 24/7, and writing them all down all the time would be a major project in itself. My thoughts on my work are best vented in conversation, and somehow writing them in a physical little book tends to make me write to myself... i talk to myself, via the page.

its usually a lot of swear words about how i hate my work.

So, instead, a blog. i hate blogs... but for somereason, this seems like a fantastic idea (its 130am, so this may be a stupid idea in sheeps clothing.) this way i can show my work in a controlled fashion, but also direct my thoughts to you, dear reader, whoever you are.

enjoy.I hope i make a good blogger.

i can also blog from my phone, while im in class, whenever the mood hits me. i guess this is where i confess i just want to mess about with computers all the time instead of those fiddly pens and pencils.

so, welcome to my project blog/journal/diary/zebra/whatever! i hope it gives you a clear indication of what i went through (past tense at the start, confusing) and hopefully what ive learnt from all the mistakes im yet to make!