Well, so it turns out that Week 7 flew by without any of us actually realising what happened. HAHA. It was the last week of the term, though, so I guess all of us were pretty brain dead. We were supposed to do up a schedule for pre-production, which we did but didn’t record down in specific detail. That week must have been the least productive week... I didn’t get much work done either, just finishing up the script but that’s only like one small part in the whole grand scheme of things.
We went on break for Week 8-9, but to be honest I spent almost every day coming back to school so it completely didn’t feel like a holiday at all... Week 8 was used to film our live-action reference for our animatics, so we spent most of our days in costume and embarrassing ourselves in public HAHA. Week 9 was less of a rush, and I did manage to do a little bit of work while juggling part-time work but still; time just flew by so quickly it’s insane.
Let’s see what I have to show for my (very minimal) efforts from the break...
Well we settled on the interior layout late in Week 8 after we finished the live-action filming. It was a quick sketch, which i later cleaned up into a floor plan for easier reference.
A strike of inspiration hit me then, and I came up with some design variations for the coat hanger that’s supposed to be next to the door. Think I worked on these over the weekend and finished them early in Week 9.
So after finishing the coat rack I thought maybe as the “concept artist” I should also do a quick thumbnail sketch/paint of how I thought the farm would be like. Turns out that I couldn’t settle on how the general shape of the house and how it should look like, so I went ahead and did a few silhouette variations on the farmhouse’s exterior. (I still have not done the thumbnail HAHAHA -kicked-)
Wowthisissobadi’msolazy I think I did this after coming home from work and feeling guilty about not having done any solid work for the past week... A multitude of bad excuses for silhouette explorations and some pumpkin study doodles hahaha.
I tried to come up with some silhouettes for Jack (the dad) as well. These are just how I thought his body shape might be like (without clothes yet), and wow I just couldn’t get away from the generic and not-unique silhouettes and body types.
So I kinda tried to block out the forms and construction of his body and tweak them around. I’m not satisfied with them at all, so I might do more exploration later on if time allows.
So we came back to school on Monday, and pretty much just did a mini show-and-tell session of what we each came up with over the holidays. (Which isn’t much, actually because apparently no one was in the mood to do work over a holiday HAHAHA)
SO YEAH WE SHOT OURSELVES IN THE FOOT. :’D The original agenda for Monday was to discuss which designs we all wanted to see in the characters and props, which we sort of did (But not very successfully, ahah). BUT, we kind of got run over by the realisation that we were actually very behind time and that the schedule we planned for ourselves in Week 7 was going to ruin us all. So most of the time was spent trying to get over that emotional and mental chasm.
What we DID manage to do was to reassign the roles. So after we finalise the designs, Evan will be in charge of the characters (turnarounds, expression sheets, poses sheets), Meishan in charge of environments (Floor plans, layouts, orthographic views, shoebox views etc.) , and I will be in charge of props (interactive prop design and turnarounds, stationery BG props, etc).
We also allocated an extra week for the design work, so that’s the plan for the next week and a half. All while studying for CTs, yay!
So anyway, I went back to the silhouettes that I did in Week 8, took 3 of the silhouettes that I liked the most, and did a few variations for each one.
These are still only in the front view though, so I will be working on them in perspective thumbnails soon!
After discussing on Tuesday, the group felt that Jack might be of a more “solid” build. So while Pep’s primary shape is circles and round-ness, Jack’s primary shape will be more on the rectangular, blocky side.
We thought of maybe pushing the proportions as well, so it was either give him really long legs or a really long body. But yeah, more sketches are gonna be needed so mmhmm.
I also got around to thinking about the crows in our animation. If Pep was to be rounded and cute, Jack blocky and solid, then it only made sense that the crows would be sharp and streamlined. During the interim viva, one of the lecturers mentioned about making the crows seem more evil and sinister, with which the other lecturers agreed. I thought of the origami crows that we used for our live action, and did a few studies.
So basically i was just playing around with colour and how the crows might look like if they were origami-styled. Problem is, though, how they’re gonna fit into the overall style of our animation. So i did a few more studies with some reference images from stock photos, and did a stylised version of the silhouettes. I tried leaving in some of the smaller details like the feathers and stuff so they weren’t completely sharp and pointy, but still seemed edgy enough.
The problem now, is how are these gonna translate into 3D and how are we gonna model and rig these? So that’s something we’ll have to keep in consideration ahaha. The most possible scenario though is that we might have to redesign them sooo yeap.
And that’s pretty much all I did for Week 10! most of the week was spent studying for CTs, which, well. Let’s just say I might have to retake 3AP hahahahhhahahahahahahhahaha shit