A Fresh Start

3rd Year pitches are looming (3-4 weeks away) and Ive been more and more dissatisfied with my pitch idea: A Good Innings. The idea was good, and I enjoyed the imagery that I came up with. However I just do not feel excited about it as I should, especially if I were to produce the work for a year. So I have decided to create a new pitch, or at least give it ago seeing as I only have a few weeks to come up with everything, so there is a strong chance I won't get enough work together to pitch it time. However I am going to try, no harm in the practice anyhow!

So here is some concept pieces I have been working on this week for this new project (but will be vaguely along the line of sky bound, or something aviation related). I do not have a  title yet, nor a story complete enough to try and describe it all now, however Im hope they imagery is enough to get people intrigued for now! (the second image, the sky octopus, is not complete and is definitely a work in progress)

A Good Innings update

   

Produced  a fair few images recently for my pre production Bible which is nearly finished, so thought I would quickly upload those. 

Firstly, here are the finialzied character sheets for both Charlie and Ron (Grandpa). These pages are just to give a basic idea of what these characters are all about. 

next are some concept pieces including a rough poster idea. 

Some more images of ron

and finally some more of Charlie.

I hope you enjoy, and there will hopefully more to come from this duo soon! :)

Lip Sync DE

Just a quick update, this is the final (low quality youtube) version of the my lip sync shot before it is taken, edited and made pretty with a nice background and snow FX. It took around 3 attempts to get it right, and I am pretty happy with how it has turned out. I think that the sound fits the character, and that it is believable that his is saying this line.  It would have been nice to take a bit more time on that action animation rather than just focusing on the lips, but time is tight.  For this short I really found the use of a live action reference video incredibly useful, and I think it would have been a lot messier without that added direction. I also think that the fact that I had around 3 or 4 attempts at this shot before I settled helped a lot too, as I think it can be easy to rush into a shot and then suddenly realise its going to be much harder than expected, and it is important, especially with Lip sync, to get it right.

I have completed my other two shots as well, but as they are so short, I haven't bothered to upload them. I will post the final product with all the other shots as soon as they are ready..

below is an older version for comparison.

A Good Innings....

It as been 'A Good Innings', said Ron.

For now, from  a little (a lot) of help and discussions from various individuals, this is my working title for now, to replace 'pocket sized grandparents' for various reasons. 1: PSP was taken, and used quite a lot by lots of other films / programs / books ect. I thought it was original I swear! Secondly, one of the key aspects to my story is that grandpa Ron was a very successful cricket player in his prime, and charlie (the boy) envy's this and wants to be as good as him! so thats that for now.

I have also updated my facial character page for Ron, similarly to my previous post for Charlie, so heres an update of that (below). Im reasonably happy with these, but to be totally honest both Grandpa Ron and Charlie are both works in progress, and probably will change a fair amount by the time the final pitches come along! But i think they are good place holders for now to give an idea of the story! 

Charlie Character Expressions

As I am preparing to compile my works into my Bible for pre production,  I am now completing the final touches,  and have found that that  I don't have any facial expressions examples for characters, which for me I always find helpful in deciphering how the character will act and feel. So Ive completed a couple of expression sheets for this character Charlie, one is colour, which is a rough colour scheme for now, as I haven't really decided on a style. The other is more rough, just in grey scale.  

Colour Expressions:

Grey-scale Expressions:

Deep Shot update

As the Deep project is drawing to a close in a few weeks, it has finally come to the animating stage. Luckily, as time was running short we have gained another animator, and it looks as though we should get everything done. We all have 3 shots to complete, and as its all in black and white, its mainly a process of key framing the main action, rough animation and then clean up. Today I have managed to do the rough animation for all 3 of my shots. Below are the shots.

1: Fall down shot. Caroline ends her short sprint by falling to her knees at the dead body.

2: Turn over shot. Caroline reaches to the body on the ground, turns him over and gasps.

3: Close-up lip sync shot. The boss greets caroline and gives her a talking too.

Im reasonably pleased with these shots, but they are still in the rough animation phase. The next stage is to confirm the movements and sort out any alterations, clean up the line, and colour in the shadow.