December Review Panels

Animatic

(with scratch tracks from Coraline OTS and Sigur Ros to test out music tension and placement)

Animation





Artwork

Production Schedule

Overview

Detailed Check List

Visuals Update

My new animatic WIP was too big for Vimeo so I'm taking the opportunity to stall posting it and fine tune it some more after this weeks critique. Here is my visual progress instead! Colour palettes still need tweaking.

wip for review panel footage.

animatic WIP

I've revamped the story and begun piecing together a new animatic. There are missing scenes and boards so check out my proposal description to get filled in. Sigur Ros mash up  for funsies! Everything is better with Sigur Ros.

Project Proposal

Here is the revised project proposal. (Please excuse some redundancy from previous posts.)

Description


Production Schedule


Budget


Work-In-Progress Animatic

Some sequences are not boarded yet and have been marked with a black as a placeholder. Refer to the story synopsis in the description to help fill in the blanks for the time being.

For this draft I made a Sigur Ros mash up to get some music ideas flowing. Please refer to this earlier draft  for more environmental and scratch sounds.

Sample Visuals

Working from reference images. Trying to nail a hair silhouette for Cara. Plus puppies!

A new character turn for Cara.

A Sun Dog animation test.

Summer Update

So it begins... fourth year.

Over the summer I did some on location research for my film and some audio recording. My brain needed a vacation so I left story out of my Summer To Do List (although I thought about it anyway...)

Here's a quick summary of what I did:


My Dad served as some voice talent for opening narration. Here's a revised intro for the film.

Fisgard Lighthouse is the perfect location reference! These are a selection of reference images I took. Too bad they wouldn't let me go up to the top.  :( Next time I will call ahead.

I also built a texture library using various surfaces on the lighthouse. It includes some of the original floor boards.

A new character turn for Cara.

Fan Art

Adorable fan art from HunnyPeas. I want to pinch their cheeks <3

Grad Proposal - Animation

Animatic WIP.

animatic 041111 from Tegan T on Vimeo.

Character test for the sun dog.

Sun Dog character test from Tegan T on Vimeo.

Thanks Martin and John for a very helpful review panel! Lots of ideas for improvement. See you in September.

(Check out my blog's moodle post for my assistance on this year's grad films.)

Grad Proposal - Artwork

Model sheets for my characters:

A test for how water cut outs might look.

Also see additional concept art posted earlier.

Grad Proposal - Written

It's here!

Sun dogs are a real natural phenomenon and an inspiration for my film. As luck would have it a week before  my panel this happened! So intense I captured it on my camera. All the way across the sky....Yeah! What does it mean? Time to work on my film I suppose.   

Proposal

Production Schedule

Budget

Part of my schedule is to make a research trip to Fisgard Lighthouse in Victoria. They do tours so I'll be able to map out the space of Cara's lighthouse.

Creative Explorations - Summary

Overall this project was a success for me. Being able to visualize your narrative in terms of composition is one thing but being able to prototype a fully rendered look for it is a whole new challenge. I really appreciated having the chance to apply my illustration and colouring skills which have been on the back burner for some time.

Animation Technique
I do like the cut out animation for the water elements. This technique will save time for a fully animated piece. I’d like to explore what else I can do with it. I will keep my choice of using 2D cell-like animated characters. I do need to fine tune how to colour them without getting too elaborate in the shading department.

Content, Story & Character
This scene is a working intro for a larger storyline called Sun Dog. It’s about a girl, Cara living in a abandoned lighthouse waiting for her Dad to return home from fishing. He is lost at sea in a storm. Sun Dog meets Cara and is able to aid her in bringing her Dad home. I am content with the story at the moment but I find Cara’s character really dull. She needs to be more outgoing and visibly getting more and more panicked as time progresses. I have since thought up a few ideas which will be in my next animatic.

Sound synchronization
I am happy with the high quality stock sounds I found in the library. I found everything I needed to set the mood of the storm at sea. However the folly sounds felt very rough. I found it difficult to find thumps, footsteps etc to match the materials even with adjusting the levels. This tells me I need to budget for either buying some folly online or making my own. Also Cara will need a voice actor.

Revelations
I discovered that I am on board for this storyline. Haha! Every time I work on it I think of improvements. That’s good right?

Unexpected surprises?
I didn’t anticipate how long cleaning up and colouring takes. And for the love of animating do cut out animation in After Effects not Premier. Compositions are your friend.

Challenges faces? Unanticipated hurdles?
The biggest challenge was how to approach the lighting of Sun Dog. Not really pleased with how it ended up in this project. It needs a lot more prototyping. I’ve been doing my research on glowing creatures that are animated in 2D.

What features will you continue with in developing your proposal? What would you like to research?
I will continue with the Sun Dog story. I would like to research more ways to colour 2D animation, and develop the character of Cara. This summer I plan to visit a light house to do some research on location.

What would you do differently? New proactive, reasonable goals you could set?
If anything I would have started the colouring process sooner. I suppose this was due to my critique group being last so I only had one week to pull it all together after my final leica crit.

Concept Art

Some concept art. Reverting back to my old ways of digital painting just for fun. (Black outline with painterly colouring.) The face proportions are a bit large >.<

Used some Miyazaki inspiration for how black contours would look for character animation. The process takes me way too long with my tablet, but doable I think if I did my clean up on a cintiq.

Creative Explorations - Final

Creative Explorations from Tegan T on Vimeo.

It's finally done! I like where the textured cut outs & painterly layouts are going. Still experimenting how I want to render my characters though.

Some of the cuts are a bit sudden. I made the mistake of not using After Effects for some of the more complicated composites. The Premier project got really heavy and it was lagging a bit. Sound is a bit rough. I would like to make it richer with better Foley. So that is where I would polish this project further given time.

On the whole this was very useful project. It's rewarding to see a fully rendered preview after working with so many line tests. The only negative feedback is related to how the critiques were organized. I know it's a time issue, but being in the last group I felt that I was 2 weeks behind where I should be. Having only one week to address my latest crit to my leica roughs, colour and animate was a crazy workload.

So far positive responses for my story :) Infinite happiness!

Creative Explorations Project - Draft 2

 Animatic with some key pose animation.

Concept art for how I will render the piece. I'm looking for a painterly effect for the backgrounds and a cell look for my characters. Still pondering how I will texture this. It's a bit flat.

Same characters, new approach. Why not just dive into how I might introduce my grad film? After receiving crit on my progress I have a lot to think about. So many new story possibilities! But I my main concern right now is tidying up my composition (line of action offender right here) and getting the visual look right for the piece or I'll never stop tweaking.

On a slightly different topic... This has been saving my life recently.
exercises for tendonitis and carpal tunnel
Works great on your poor animating claw hand, wrist and arm.

Inspirational Artist - Chris Appelhans

 "Children have a capacity to handle much ‘darker’ stuff than we give them credit for — as long as the underlying tone of the story is honest and hopeful”

-Chris Appelhans

  Chris Appelhans is an inspirational artist to me because of his use of colour to set the mood of a scene. He works primarily in Photoshop and water colours. He is well known for his conceptual works for Monster House, Coraline, Fantastic Mr.Fox, Princess and the Frog and more. Here are some favourites of mine.

Coraline

Fantastic Mr.Fox

Hotel for Dogs

He has so much more beautiful work. So check out his website for colour scripts, costume, environment and character design, as well as his personal projects.

froghatstudios,

his blog xanga,

a great (and perhaps the only) interview with him guupress

His recurring theme of dark versus light colour palettes will be helpful in creating a look for Sun Dog.

Creative Explorations Project - Rough Concepts

Here's my first draft of my leica.

Please excuse the horrible sound editing. I was forced to use movie maker after Premier corrupted my project.

I had previously created these characters in a series of illustrations, named Sun-Dog.

They have also appeared in another leica reel that followed more closely to the plot of the above images.
here!

Seeing how attached I have become to this concept it will likely become the foundation of my grad film. The plot is more visual at this stage than having any serious depth or back story.  That is my next task. Let the prototyping being!