*M* Epic Ice Caves!

This took forever, but its done! Again, extended for panning

Here are some more:

*D* Happy New Year! An update overdue

Hey! Here's my first post to my blog in 2011. Lets hope its the first of many cool things to show you all!


Right, I have two test movies to post up. Fingers crossed they come out alright on here

The 1st is a clip playing around with the Knight dancing. This was made taking into account stuff I had learnt from making the previous two tests

I showed Dan this vid and the 2nd one, and he said that I needed to slow in inbetween taking steps. He would be very light on his feet, so he will spend more time on tip-toes then landing a foot on the ground. He is a little heavy footed here.

The other clip I did was a 2D test on how the penguin would move. Its extremely simple, but I wanted to play around with how his cone shape would move in water.

However, there has been a drastic change to the story of The Deep. Andy sent me the following message:

hi emma i thought i would let u know that i have come to the decision to cut the penguin from the film. this is due to drastic story changes and the flow and character relationships.

thank you soo much for all ur hard work and please dont think it has gone to waste as it will still be presented in the development stages even in the later stages of the production.

the penguin in the film did not fit as it was used mainly as a directing tool to get the kid in the water, after that the penguin got in the way of the story and characters. the story now focuses on the eel and kid resulting in a better flow and arc for both characters and story.

once again im sorry but please let me know if ur available for anymore design work

thanks andy k 

I admit I am a little disappointed, because I had really taken to the cute fella, but I am behind Andy all the way on the decisions he makes. Hopefully this change will be to the benefit to the project, and will help us come up with a cool result!

The work I did towards the penguin character is in no way a waste, I have learnt a lot from the experience and had a lot of fun producing it all. In the industry, this kinda thing happens all the time. If a character doesn't quite flow in the story, they often have to be removed to help accommodate a better plot.

Andy has asked me to do some more work for the team though, I am to design a polaroid camera for the boy to use. I must research cameras and come up with something that can be made and used in the film. 

*M* Finished storyboards for Raven Project Pitch

Finished! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Yeh I'm happy with this. Took longer then I thought, probably because I need to incorporate a lot of layers. I wanted to try and put as much detail in as poss, so that these frames would blend well with the rest of the animatic.

The Raven has his mouth open, to show that he is the one talking.

*M* Finished Penguin ref sheet?

Again, like I've said before, this design is subject to change, but I'm happy with the result! :D

EDIT:
Andy - thanks emma looking much better now and i really appreciate the work that your putting into the group


:') I'm so happy! I'm glad he likes this design!

:D

*D* *M* Penguins, penguins, penguins

Yarrrrrp we have even more drawings for the penguin character. I'm actually amazed at how many doodles I have done for this. I must have accumulated over 30 individual pictures, I think! I'll have to count them

Anyway, Yeh I spoke to Andy, and he liked the direction I was going in. However, he wanted the character to have no legs (just flipper feet). He also emphasized that he wanted the penguin to be more triangular-shaped. Rather like a fatter, cuter version of the evil penguin in the Wallace and Gromit episode, "The Wrong Trousers".

So without further ado, I got stuck in again. You can tell that I haven't immediately gone for drastically triangular shaped penguin designs. This is still rather experimental. I also keep thinking of what I have learnt in the past. Triangles tend to be dangerous shapes. Squares tend to be safe shapes. Circles tend to be fun shapes. Characters are often designed based on this theory.

Below I have tried to design more triangular-shaped bodies. I have compromised a bit though, by making his body like a cone. Pictured here is the camera that he discovers in the film idea. It is not designed to be like the one that will be in the animation. I just sketched it out really quickly.

It is important that I drew him with the camera, because I want to make sure his flippers are long enough to reach out and hold things. If the model is designed in a way that it cannot operate in this way, it will significantly slow down the process of getting his design perfected.

 

EDIT: I've done a quick re-concept too. Here's the after and before:

^^^ New Design ^^^

 VVV Old Design VVV

 I think I'm still rather fond of the original, personally, but I think the new design is a lot more simple. It will be easier to model, rig and animate (To the best of my knowledge).

However, I think I will need to keep going with this design. I still need to formulate a Reference Sheet like the old one. I want to wait for Andy to give me the thumbs up though. :D

*D* *M* Penguin again... Shape experiments and expressions

FIRST OF ALL here is that expression sheet I did for the old design of the penguin. He looks a little to exaggerated and human-like here perhaps, but here it is incase we go back to this design.

Anyway, moving on, I have been trying to make the penguin character look a little cuter my trying some different body shapes. The top left diamond shape is what Andy suggested last Thursday. I tried a few other shapes too. Here are the line and colour tests below. These were done in Photoshop

 

I showed my pictures to Mike, and he said they were nice, but he was still very keen on the concept drawing I did a while ago (See older posts). I then showed him the pictures below. He said he was more fond of these then the pictures above. I agree.

So I did a few more pictures along those lines. Here they are below

I really am not sure which direction to go in now. I'm going to send this post to Andy and see what he thinks. :D

EDIT: FEEDBACK

Mel:
♥ it. its very cartoony. im not sure if its what andy has in mind. If it was up to me i like the recent shape of the penguin as it will be the animation where it will truly come to life and simple to rig

Clym:
defo gna use those mouth shapes. Epic :D

Andy:

getting there, try taking the legs out and just doing feet that are attached to his main body, u cant really see penguins legs cos its all in the main body mass

Andy also linked me to an article to "Happy Feet".

I think that I can conclude that I am getting closer with the design of the penguin. I think the last images of this post are the ones to keep going with. I agree with Andy, the way I've done the feet is a little rubbish. Flat short feet will be better. Rigging the feet will be a pain, I expect, but I let the riggers worry about that. I'll make sure they are aware of that issue when it comes to it.

I should also watch Happy Feet again, because the penguins are very real and are animated beautifully. Might be good reference for how the feet should be too.

*M* Beefeater mourns - revisited

Almost forgot to mention in my last post! Above is a window design Alex came up with for the Beefeater to peer out of. I used both of his designs to come up with how the scene should look roughly.

I altered the window design slightly by combining them both into one. I liked the raven element and the unfussiness of the right window, but I also like the pointed top part of the left window too. So I took all these bits and pieces and came up with the below pictures.

 

How I picture this is that the flash of light will pop up intermittently to represent the explosions.

I'm going to send these designs to Sophie now, for a critique.

EDIT: Sophie - "A.W.E.S.O.M.E!"

I think that's a thumbs up for the time being! Ace!




EDIT2: Unfortunately, this scene was cut from the final animatic, because the scene wouldn't have flowed well with the rest of the clip. However, it gave me some practice with staging, lighting, and storyboarding in general.

*D* *M* Ballet!

Just had a major art frenzy. By gum. Drawing Ballet dancing is just so fun! I love it! It's like doing life drawing all over again. I have LOADS of pics to upload, but for now, here's the vid that inspired it all

EDIT Here are the doodles I did!

*D* *M* Penguins Swimming

*M* Ed Reference Sheet EDIT Old Ref sheet

Expression sheets to come!

EDIT: Revised red sheet can be seen in more recent post

*D* *M* More Finished Penguin Ref Sheets

Here we go! Ed is coming together rather nicely I think!

I've done two versions, because I remember Andy Kinnear saying that he wanted to see a version with a dark coloured coat with a blue shimmer. There isn't a huge difference, but it does change his look a bit. I think the one above looks cuter and more childish. The one below looks a little more serious, for some reason. After talking to him about these two concepts, he said he preferred the darker skinned penguin. So I will do a ref sheet with the colour change

I will probs do some more detailed reference sheets for this guy, but yeh this is how I think he'll look. I even did a little picture of the little dude over the top of an environment picture Andy picked out and put on his blog. I had a lot of fun working on this, and I hope Andy and the rest of the team think he looks okay. I'm sure there's things that will need editing, but this is still good progress.

In terms of turning this penguin into a 3D animated model, I tried to make the design as easy to cope with as possible. No hair or feathers to worry about. His feet have slight leg bits, so they can be rigged to bend and stuff, which will help when it comes to walk cycles. His face is fairly straight forward. His beak will be "rubbery" so you can change the size and shape to match his mood. He has a little tail too, for added character and flow. His flippers have no hands, so no tampering with rigging fingers. Oh and his mouth opens and closes, and has a tongue.

Here's some livestream footage of me drawing the penguin critters!

*D* *M* The Deep concept

I have been lucky enough to be asked by Andy Kinnear to do some work for his project "The Deep". I have warned him that I may not be able to do huge amounts of work for him because of the other work I am doing, but I have been able to find some spare time to do some concept work of his penguin character.

Here's some concept work he presented me as a basis to work from.

So once I had an idea of what he wanted, I got to work. I am under the impression that this little dude is a rather cheeky penguin. He has been accidently transported by a stray iceburg to unknown waters. He has decided to make his home there, since he likes it more then the cold wintery lands he came from. He comes across the hero of the story, and aggravates him because of their rivalling need to catch fish.

I know for a fact that "The Deep" is undergoing some story repairing, so this brief bio of the penguin may change.

Here are some drawings I did to start my exploration of the character. Most of these are just me practising drawing penguins, since they are an animal I haven't drawn a lot of in the past. I looked at a lot of different penguin pictures, so I could go for a variety of different shapes, sizes and markings.  The ones with blue arrows are the ones Andy greenlit for me to continue developing.

Here are some more designs, based more on the greenlit ones I did above.

Lol smiley face for filler!

I'm currently working on some more finished concepts of the final penguin design. I'd upload them now, but I want to do some more drawings to really complete the penguin.


But yeh I almost forgot, here's a little character design brainstorm I did for both the raven and penguin designs

Please take some time to read this, it contains a lot of my deliberations about the designs, including colour, shape, and personality.

I plan to animate the finished 3D model of the penguin when it is done. I will do some little tests of him swimming soon, though I'll probs be doing stuff for Smitten first.

*D* *M* Raven concept

The Raven project has been going very swiftly, in terms of first hand research. We went on a trip to the Tower of London (Sophie Lodge, Steven Pender, James Ferdinando and myself) and got to see the Ravens and their masters in person. It was a fantastic visit, and really fueled me in terms of material to work on. Here are some drawings I did.

Early concepts. I rather like the design in the middle left. He looks kinda kooky, but a little like the vultures in the Jungle Book, a reference Sophie highlighted in her pitch.

These odd things in the pic above are the ravens without their beaks, wings, and talons. Sophie remarked at one point about how she'd like to see what they would look like if they took off their "uniform", so I considered how they might appear without the things that make them birds. They look very odd and a bit too comical, so we kinda scrapped this idea in the end. However I'm glad I tried it out!

The Ravenmaster in his uniform. I did a study of his face profile as he was talking to us

Here's some more early concepts I did. Sophie Lodge said that she is looking for something a little more realistic (However she likes the bottom raven in the above image)

I have done some more sketches going for a more realistic approach. Here they are below:

I also have the task of doing storyboarding and animatic for the team. At the moment we have lots of ideas and routes to go on for this project. Here's what I came up with for my brainstorming. Most focus on the Raven we love to hate - Munin, the black widow.

The fact that we have so many ideas is really encouraging, but we are having problems finalizing ourselves to just one proper chiseled framework for a story. So until we have a proper script, I am unable to do storyboarding and such until Sophie has decided on the direction for this project.