Easter update!

Hurrah! It's Easter! I've been working on the backgrounds for the Red or Dead brief we've been issued. I decided it would be much easier to recycle a few of the backgrounds for our project for various scenes.

The Palace (the bike race & the Prince's return/the Indian's escape)

The Princess' balcony.

The Palace

The Wedding Scene 

(kept simple as the characters will become silhouette puppets at this point)

I'm going to keep working on them, smarten them up a bit etc.

I've also been working on the Yes,Yes,No project, animating scenes. Work still in progress, hopefully a render out soon!

Red or Dead

A new project, designing a small advertisement for the Red or Dead fashion brand. The aspect of their brand we're looking at are the bikes. We've been given the task of promoting the bikes using a 30-60 second animated advert to the story of 'The Enchanted Horse' from the Arabian Nights tales. The brief entitles us to as much freedom as we like, so long as we stick to the Red or Dead brand, The Enchanted Horse story and to try and make it feel as punky and kitsch to promote the style of Red or Dead. Our group has begun discussing ideas, we've decided to work with the very kitsch-punky feel to Red or Dead and develop it. As Art Director of the project, I've begun looking into the style of Red or Dead via their website for preliminary research;

http://www.redordead.com/

http://www.redordead.com/products/bikes

From there began looking through Vogue, and various other fashion/homeware catalouges for inspiration. I've also been looking at various advertisements and textures.

Some advertisements I found particulary inspiring were that of a Carolina Herrera advert, promoting children's wear.

(c) Copywrite Carolina Herrera - As seen in Vogue, Oct 2011.

I found the composition interesting, with an incredibly busy area surrounding the children, along with the books promoting a serious, intellectual atmosphere, yet this is pushed aside with the playful atmosphere of the hand-made tents and bunting surrounding the children. 

(c) Mulberry - As seen in Vogue Oct 2011

I was also inspired by the Mulberry advert, in which the model is within a world of giants. There's a strange eerie-ness to it which I hope I can achieve with our piece. 

I began working and using the research I had found, I decided to begin working on a small collage piece. I scanned in fabric samples, which primarily consisted of clothes and decorative pillowcases.

Here's what I created so far:

The grass is created using a green base with texture brushes on top. I lowered the opacity down and varied the shade. 

I'm currently tempted to keep the white within the bike spokes. I feel this enhances the bike, especially as the background is quite loud. 

YesYesNo - more background designs.

More background work for the YesYesNo project. This is for the seagull's bell ringing scene

And for the fight scene on the boat, a simple design so other factors can be incorporated and not to distract the viewer from the fight itself

Yes Yes No - Barmaid Test

Still working on the Yes Yes No project, a quick test of ther Barmaid and the finished background of the pub behind the counter. Hopefully soon, we'll begin animating.

Animatic, Tests and Suzie Pea

The late upload of my Animatic and Animation Tests for my 'Underground Circus' project. I've been pretty slack with my blog, so here's a huge update and I'll keep updating it regularly!

Animatic:

Sounds from FreeSound.org

Two Test Animations:





Aside from that project finishing I've also been working on a third year project 'Suzie Pea'. A cut-out animation based on a little girl and a dream she has with her companion, Teddy. I've been making some of the puppets, here are them so far:

Pre Production Work

After our hand in yesterday, here is all the turnarounds, backgrounds, storyboard and concept work I produced for my project;

concept pieces:

turnarounds:
n.b. After critique on Jim the Seal, I changed him to be much curvier. His body seemed a bit angular, so I re-drew his turnaround.

Backgrounds;

 Concept Storyboards;

Pre Production and Group Project

A lot of development for both projects has ensued. The animatic for the YesYes Group project has been re-edited. I am just needing to add sound to it now. However here is the priliminary animatic and the recently re done one too.

Preliminary hand in before critique:


Recently edited (minus sound) after critique:



So far the project is going quite well. Lee has begun some animation tests too. With the deadline approaching soon, we can begin to hopefully get the animatic completly smoothed out and sound added too.

The Pre-Production project I'm doing is also going well. After critique, a slight re-design of the characters went into progress to make them feel more 1950's inspired. I researched into a lot of animated 50's advertisements;











and this blog which has helped me an incredible amount for research:

http://cartoonmodern.blogsome.com/

Re design of Jim the Seal, Mark & Martina, Tilly and Lionel.
Turnarounds for each character too.