#IM ALMOST DONE THE STORYBAORD I

[iced-souls]

I like how I’m always like “WHY HAVENT I FINISHED MY ANIMATIC YET ITS BEEN LIKE A YEAR BROOO COME ON BRAIN!!!”

and then proceed to binge-draw an entire storyboard for an entire song for another animatic off of an entirely different thing

[catshawanimates]

15-20 November

Character Design

Ive been thinking i want to change my character design for a while, the current one just doesn’t hype loads, I knew i wanted to keep the trench coat for ease of animating and i think it fits the tone, but ultimately i was always going to focus more on movement conveying character than ‘design’ elements, so i’ve gone with this design:

It’s very similar in that its got the same like, hair and clothes basically, (i’m going back and forth on the backpack, i think for the story it’d be good cause its showing that he’s like on a journey both home from the train station and also on is journey to widening his mind and so on, it’d make things a bit harder to animate but i think its probably worth it for the story ultimately.

Ive just changed the features a bit in a way that to me makes him look idk just a bit less bland, i fully realised id just have to have his face showing in some shots, and ultimately its probably fine no matter who the character is (which to be fair is actually the point)

When going through designs my flatmate pointed out that it’d be interesting to have like, an older character as usually you assume that an older male character kind of knows everything already, so it’d be cool to show that like, everyones got something to learn and everyone can teach something as well, which im hoping to show regardless through having a huge range of the characters that pass by In the library, I’m going to design them next, i count them as almost kind of part of the environment design though to be fair.

This week I did all the flat design I think i’ve got, and then did two little animations to start sort of exploring expressions and things, I really want ot practice my squash and stretch of faces because i find it a real challenge to keep volumes consistent, so i’ve done a closeup little rough animation and another walk cycle based off someone i saw walking about the other day. I then put the walk cycle into my cathedral set, I’m still working on how it should integrate because I don’t so much like him being hollow with the rest of the set.

Started the Tunnel

Before this term ends as part of my pre-production I wanted to have made a set from start to finish myself, so that i have a solid work plan for next term, so ive decided to go for a space thats the opposite of the cathedral/hall, just to cover the whole sort of spectrum of the spaces i want to create, and to ultimately see if this technique ive been working through does Work everywhere.

So im building a ‘tunnel’ which is basically just one of the many corridors like it in the library, winding with weird perspectives, quite daunting and endless but very claustrophobic, whilst the hall is like HERE IT IS this is more like ok but whats round every corner, every step you take your’e seeing a whole new thing.

So i worked through about a third probably of the modelling, and made some UV Maps to make UV textures like with the cathedral, next week I’ll hopefully finish it up.

tried boils on the environment

I also tried a technique mike suggested i give a go like a week or two ago, of having boils on my environment so that it integrates with the character animation a bit better, I really like this idea in principle but its difficult to get boils that are subtle enough on paper at the thickness Im working from, so I think i’m going to try some other way to get boils that are more gentle, im thinking maybe tracing onto very thin paper so i can trace more accurately ( though its getting the right pencil weight thats the real challenge) and then multiply-photoshop-layering them onto a paper grain texture, then using that. Maya, also Hates the big files which is a bit of a roadblock

Story

I possiibly have thought up an ending, possibly, I’ll keep thinking about it over the weekend and might storybaord it before the monday catchup if i can manage it. I’m concerned with it striking a too wholesome tone, but theres probably ways around that.