Updated "The Deep" brief story structure.

This can also be found on Mel's blog. She was kind enough to point it out to me to look at.

kid swims to meet penguin.
kid takes photo of penguin.
flash causes eel to attack.
camera falls in the water.
penguin sees this.
...penguin swims down into the water after the camera.
kid finds himself alone.
he is looking around very scared.
flash from bottom of screen kid and eel look down.
penguin is swimming with the camera back to the kid.
eel attacks penguin.
kid gestures to the penguin in a moment of horror.
kid looks up to the weapon on the side of his submarine as a moment of hope and anger.
kid collects the harpoon gun inter cut with eel attacking penguin.

This is the general storyline now. This helps me a lot in terms of getting an idea of the penguin's role in the story

*D* Animation reference for sword fighting

Just found this brilliant animation on youtube. Take a look!

*D* Smitten - Reference for Don Juanova

After an intense discussion with Dan on how to improve my animation tests, I have a lot of leads on what to look at, in terms of reference. I need to do my next few animations tests using reference, rather then animating straight ahead without much thought about why he is making the moves he is doing.

Matt Vadis, our group leader, posted some really valuable material for me to use. Here's a link to his blog post below:


Matt Vadis: Don Juanova Reference

I'm going to repost the most important vids I wish to look at more closely below.

Slow motion Ballet!


Waltzing!




I'd really like to take a fragment of the dancing and use this for close study. I will try and animate Don waltzing around like a lovestruck casonova

Dan gave me and Matt a good lead to follow for sword fighting reference. Errol Flynn. Here he is, among some other sword fighting greats

*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.

*D* Smitten research - My Dog Tulip

As we were talking at length with out Tutor Mike about our Toonboom animation project, he suggested a film to research called "My Dog Tulip" I did a youtube search for it and found a trailer showcasing the story, completely animated in the program Toonboom



I must say that I was not disappointed when I saw this video. It certainly displays some very strong 2D animation. I must say it can look a little rushed and scruffy, but I think that is the whole idea of the style of storytelling the film was going for.

*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.

Back to the drawing board...

Well, I had an intense Thursday sesh. I have to do a lot of redrawing and rethinking for the projects I am working on. Here's a brief summary of what I need to do:

THE DEEP
The story and personality of the penguin has changed, so I need to redesign him to fit his new persona. Instead of him being cheeky and more human, he is gonna be acting more like a penguin, and slightly more inquisitive.

SMITTEN
My animation tests have received a lot of critique. Dan told me to avoid impulsively animating anything (He didn't like the end bit of the animation test, too "MC Hammer"!) and to concentrate on looking for reference (Waltz and fencing videos in particular). I have to keep animating. I should play with timing, and try and really get into the character.

THE RAVEN PROJECT
The shots I did were good, but again they were not what Sophie was looking for. I think our communication of what we both envisioned for this shot was lacking, because I should have drawn the beefeater inside looking out the window, but the camera is outside looking up at the window. However, after much discussion about lighting etc, I am simply going to have the Beefeater looking towards the window, with the camera looking at him from behind, inside the room.
Sophie also told me that the shot depicts a war time scene, so there needs to be explosions in the background and stuff