Friends are like umbrellas 12

Fixed up the colors that was supposed to go on the interior of the castle. Looking back at the old thing now I am kind of glad I never got to finish it the first time around. Someone should seriously have stopped me from using the colors I picked out back then. I know I was thinking of making the purple contrast against the orange, but I have still no idea why on earth I picked the green. It looks like I tried to make seaweed stew or something. Next time I do something like that I'd like someone to stop me.

Friends Are Like Umbrellas 11

Ahahahaha....Haven't touched this film since June. Might be a good thing. After all, now that time have passed and I have all the time in the world I realized that one section I didn't have time to have fun with is all mine to play around with as I please.

Next section to animate is the castle scene, and now that I had a second look....I don't like the old costumes so I redid them. Background colors will be the next on my overhaul list for this section. (aka. what was I thinking and why did no one stop me.)

And on another note:
It looks like if I want any music done for this I will have to get my own piano and magically become the master of sound. Or I will just wait until the film is over and done with completely before bothering with any kind of music at all.

Friends are like Umbrellas 8

Revisited the animatic as I got some feedback saying that some parts were a bit off.

Another tutor made me change the colors so that they all went along with one another, as well as making new costumes for the castle scene so it would look more like a party. I didn't want to confuse people by changing the outfits around too much, so I decided to not change the colors and overall shapes of them, also unfortunate as it is I do not have the luxury of spending a long time on doing pre production and play with things in a grand fashion unless I plan to kill off my animators during this production. I know they could be capable of animating something more complicated but we simply do not have the time to play as much as I'd like.

I managed to re color all the sheets I previously had as well as making a new one that is for the marry go round horses because I realized that I didn't have one.

Friends are like umbrellas 7, Crocodile tears 2

I decided to take a day away from the studio to do work, I find that I need a balance between being in and not being in. I simply can't be in constantly unless I plan to go insane.

I did inbetween animation and a background for Crocodile tears. It was supposed to have trees in it, but he said he didn't like it, although I think I might try to do another version with trees and not make them black, use colors instead, like the buildings - because to me it looks too empty, and especially when they are supposed to be in a park and the previous scene has tonnes of trees in it.

Then I tackled my own project. I didn't like my previous color key page so I made a new one which I like much better. Also I traced the 3D models Conner gave me so that I have a 2D reference people can work from on the props. I got the scooter and the umbrella, still need to do the broken umbrella, but for that I need to speak a bit with Conner again and ask him to tweak the 3D model and I need to check on the person that is supposed to design the water dragon since I am still missing that character - I'll also need a reference sheet for Roy, the boy at the end.

Friends are like umbreallas 6

I did a map over the main sequence so that I could put down the rules of the white space, and show the journey in one go. To me it was really clear what was going on, but I didn't know if it would work for everyone else, so I asked two people; one that is fully into the project and another that knows about it, but isn't really in the process. It made perfect sense to the person that was on the project, but the other person pointed out a few things that confused them - which I added in so that if I hand it to a brand new new crew member I don't have to explain everything A-B-C style. It was always meant to go together with the animatic and storyboards, but it was nice to get feedback from someone that didn't remember either so I could get what would be confusing to someone new as the map was bluntly obvious to me, and my team mate understood it just fine.

I got told that since my backgrounds are mainly white I don't have to do actual layouts for it, because really, what are you going to do about a white background than just hand someone a white paper?
I found that instead I have to treat the scenes as props, design them first then place them how I need them.

I started out with the merry-go-round since its the first object we get to see.
My tutor mentioned that amusement parks are more exciting at night, so I thought I'd add some more purple into the design so it hints more to a night scene and the lights on the merry go round stands out a little more. I will have a chat with my background artist about what to do with the colors.

Friends are like umbrellas 5

Gwah, trying to juggle everything at once. *dead*

I have found abandoning Photoshop and work in Sai gets everything done faster for me. I like rotating my canvas and flipping it at a button rather than dealing with clicking X amount of buttons before I can do any of that. SAI I love you, why are you not an industry standard?

I have gotten around to finish the costume changes for the main character. I am not entirely sure about the dress though. I need it to be white and simple, but still keep her overall shape and not have it look like her coat. I figured it had to have the fuzzy part since the rest of the film is put at autumn, and the funeral part is having a completely black and white environment it would be weird if it was summer dress.

I finally got the Character sheets done, some help from Darren to color one of
them.

 

I also did this test image using a background that Likem did to see what the style would look like. I got an overall better response on the one that didn't look fuzzy, like one of my tutor put it "looks out of focus"

 

Friends are like umbrellas 1

Nevermind my brilliant current working title for this. I don't really have a title at the moment and "friends are like umbrellas" sounds like one of the titles you'd get from the anime Gintama so I will most likely find something else on the way.


I'm making my own story for the third year film, it is about a friendship represented by an umbrella.
The first page is the main part of the story, or rather the first sketches I did for the story so it gave an general overview of the story.

The second page is the first storyboards where the guy picks up the girl on his scooter, the bottom part is bits and pieces of an idea for the ending after I had a talk though the story with one of my lecturers - after having some quite obvious stuff pointed out. Like the story missing a character arc the first time around.

After the talk I came up with something slightly longer than what I had first intended, but looking back I think it looks a bit more solid than just "scooter + traffic accident + dead"

The breakdown of the story is:
Guy gives girl umbrella  
-still have to figure why and how he does it-
 I have however decided that she wears black to represent her being depressed one way or another
Collage of how the umbrella is the thing keeping them as friends  
See the umbrella getting battered and worn over time, but it's still in one piece and getting patched up when it gets torn, being a physical representation of their friendship (always involved as a tool to pry open doors, sword fencing and baseball bat when they are fighting, or used as an actual umbrella -sun or rain in all the clips)
Guy picks girl up on scooter
girl is waiting outside in the rain, guy come to pick her up
Traffic accident
see the girl on ground, surrounded by bystanders, all with umbrellas because of the rain, looking to her side seeing her own umbrella broken beyond repair
Girl rushed into hospital
medics rushing her through a hallway on a stretcher with this heart meter sound in the background
Girl in hospital with friends
The girl is sitting in her hospital bed, her friends have some to cheer her up, when she nods to her broken umbrella on the chair next to her, her friends shy away, not wanting to answer her
Funeral
The girl is standing in a lineup in front of a coffin with her broken umbrella in a white dress, she drops the umbrella into the hole
Another Rainy day
The girl is dressed back in black walking past a person in the rain, looks down at her hands where she has the patch that used to be on the umbrella, stops and stands still in the rain, returns to hold her umbrella over the stranger she just passed.

She was supposed to just drop the broken umbrella down into the hole with the coffin at the funeral, I don't know if to keep it or not though, my lecturer suggested putting it on top of the grave. I kind of like the idea that she gives up for a while, letting go of the umbrella itself, but keeps this one little piece of it - the patch that got stitched on, then passes by anther person that is who she used to be, she stops and thinks for a bit before realizing that just because that person that meant a lot to her is gone doesn't mean her life is over, and she can mean something for someone else just like he did to her.

Sort of a "pay it forward" thing.

The Amazing Eyelamp

Uni decided to give us a project to practice making short movies for our third year. I went with the option of picking a picture and making a story out of it.

I came up with the idea of eyelamps.
Because that is totally not a recipe for creepy things. At all.

Somehow this ended up a bit more violent than what I initially wrote down. I guess that's what happens when you don't really have it fully structured all the way.

I chose not to add sound to this for a couple of reasons:
- I didn't want to do the voice over for the news reporter/commercial commentator myself. I felt like my girly voice would kill any kind of gritty mood this thing has.
- I don't actually have a music track in my head for this one. Just the squeaky sound of metal joints moving and "I have been running too much" breathing.
- If they don't understand the story from this...then I don't think sound adding would do anything for it.

Pick and mix 3

Turnarounds of the two main characters, the angel and the demon.
A little height chart of the four most important characters; Angel, Mentor, Demon and Allotment victim.
Tried my best to make their shapes different at the same time as drawing in my artist's style. A bit difficult when all he seems to do is draw everyone, especially the men look the same.
So the mentor and the allotment victim (...this makes it sounds like he dies at some point, but I really just don't have a better thing to call him.) is based of  characters you wouldn't find as often in his drawings.

Pick and mix 2

Done a few concept things for the pick and mix.
The first one is an idea for the Angels/law firm office he works at. Was thinking of picking lighter colors from pictures to make them be the good guys at the same time as Georges Barbier seem to use a lot of pastels and blues in some pictures. There is a phoenix at his desk since I thought of picking that as their logo thing, also my artist seem to like to draw birds, especially phoenixes. I simply decided to name them Phoenix legal company for now.
I know he really loves his bright red, but I thought I'd save that and the heavy black/gold for the demons office/law firm and also use a dragon for their logo/mascot as he have drawn a couple of those, it will also symbolise more of a threat since dragons are big and scary. Not sure what to call them though....

Did a few concept drawings which I colored.
One for the city the law office is in (featuring the mentor and the angel), the train they have to take to get to the allotment area and a little part of an allotment. I left the sky white in the last one because my artist sometimes does that, but I will probably draw a new one with blue sky.

These pictures are mainly testing to see how things might work, so none of them are final, especially not the allotment one. I find it really hard to keep the style of my artist while trying to draw normal looking things, mainly because he only ever do single illustrations which means he get to play with just how much detail he want to, or lack thereof. I feel like I can't really do that when I need it to be a specific place, like the city. I can't just have a big open space with one building on it. So I'm trying my best to at least keep the shapes and the typical types of buildings that he does.

With the allotment I feel like I'm trying to draw an organized version of Alice in Wonderland. He's got lots of pieces of plants and nature in his work, the only thing is that he loves to make that the most detailed thing in the entire image, so it does take up a lot of the attention. I won't have much of a problem with my Phoenix lawyers as they are quite simple, but my demon might prove a problem as she is based on his more pattern crazy clothing he's done.

Pick and Mix

For our pre production class we have to make a short cartoon based on cards that we picked. I ended up with the following cards:

Artist - Georges Barbier
Theme/Show  -  Legal thriller
Character - Angel
Location/setting - Allotments

I find it funny how it all worked out with the combination, it's really easy to come up with things at the same time as it's rather hard. Trying not to fall into the trap of basing it a lot of other shows at the same time as the simplest explanation of how it will work out up to now have been me throwing out "Law and order meets supernatural in a garden patch and they have legal battles like in Phoenix Wright."

I've been toying a bit around with Barbier's style, I did find the eyes in his drawings to be kind of small, so that is a thing I have changed a little, but I tried to keep as much as possible from his original style in my sketch work.

Been thinking of putting the entire story to a 20's England, toyed with the thought of Denmark for a little while since they have had allotments from an early age there as well, but didn't seem to find too much information on the 20's from there.
Or maybe I should just make up my own world entirely...
Either way it's 20's style all the way.