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.

Concepts, More Concepts!

After developing Ron a lot, I am now focusing my efforts onto the kid, who I now know I want to be around the age of 10-12. And male. Before I felt he needed to be a young man rather than child, but having a kid means for more emotion, and empathy.

Here is an early concept of the boy / child 

I really liked the style of this character, but I felt I made him look alittle too old. So I attempting to make him young in the next piece, also playing around with a bit more of a stylized look to see if I wanted to pursue it. I didn't. 

This final concept is one that took around 7 hours to complete. I particularly like this style I've managed to achieve here, and although it needs some work I think the age of the child is right here, so am going to pursue this character type further into another concept. 

:)

Pocket sized grandparents Concept

Just a rough concept piece for this 3rd year project, of which i still Haven't found a new name for!

A few developments I have decided on are that there is not longer a female, grandma character. I feel having another character would cause there to be two stories, a love story and the relationship between the grandparents and the boy. I really want to focus the story on the relationship of the boy and grandpa, so am developing this idea further.

here is the concept, playing around with scale to emphasise how much Ron is shrinking. Also my first time attempting matte painting, so needs a bit of work still! 

(the hand is a placeholder for now, and the piece is a WIP)