finished shot 19

I've just finished the cleans for shot 19, which is the shot where rich recognises the music and man next to him and get's into the music.

Progress

Everything's going well. We've got around six weeks till deadline and we're pretty on top of stuff. There are about 15 clean shots that i've been meticulously working on, while jasmine's been smashing out rough animation.

Update

Reference Shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wymzvxxKk68

Found this link to a really badly animated  3d piece, but some of the shots could be used as templates for the guitar playing shots

Updates!

whoaaah, it's been a while since we've posted here. We've finished all of our pre production and we're now doing our roughs and cleans. We've completed around a third of the clean, but have been avoiding all the hard animation scenes. so here are a few clean shots i've cleaned up over the last week or so. it's coming along well.

Bus outline

Alright, so this will (hopefully) be the final bus in the film. It's only really going to be seen from the top, so i don't think the wheels will even have to be animated which is cool, but i wanted to give it a really shabby, end of the line kinda look. I think with a bit of colour it'll look even better.

Richard Rough Walk Cycle

This is Richard's really, really, very rough walk cycle, it's more of an angry pace though, i might tone down the arms. and yes, i know his head changes shapes and makes it extremely difficult to watch.

Coloured Chaaracter Turn-arounds

Alright, so after a long time comin', the COLOURED character turn-arounds are finished. These are the colours that will be used in the film.

Finished Environments!

So after weeks and weeks i've finally finished all of the environments. Jazz and I have basically worked out a strategy called 'The Master Shot', which is basically one shot that enables us to zoom in and use different aspects of it for the environment, thus saving us lots and lots of time re-drawing unneccessary backgrounds. I've designed the other environments for the shots that had different angles or different environments. I've used the final texture over all of these backgrounds, which is hopefully what the finished product will look like, but before post production we'll just be using the colouring and putting the paper texture in later. SO here are all the finished backgrounds.

Animatic...almost done!

 

An almost finished animatic. We re-arranged shots, cut out shots, added in shots, and basically did enough to cut our film down to the length we wanted it to be with it still being readable. Although the sound still needs to be added and the timing adjusted, we're pretty happy with it. We'll start animating this week/next week hopefully. Ben is working on the layouts while I am working on key framing a few shots. A new schedule is in the making for each shot as well.

Animatic with Sound

Hopefully final character colours!

Alright, so i finally did a colour change of the old lady. For this i used a linear burn texture over the whole piece set on 54% opacity. I just changed the colour of the pink on her dress from a very intense to a very vague, light pink, which i think works well. I like the drabness of the other two characters, and how they contrast with her cheerful colours. These colours were unsaturated, which i believe still works better than the completely coloured, pictured below.

This is another unsaturated texture, this time with a multiply layer instead of linear burn. I've also basically drawn an enormous white circle from the centre and changed it to linear burn. The difference from the first picture is very subtle, but once you compare them it's an obvious change. It was Simon's idea to do it, as he thought it looked a bit flat and if there was a certain colour change that kind of 'cascaded' out of it, it'd give it new life and depth. I'm pretty happy with this one.

Character Colours in Environment

I re-coloured the characters together, and placed them in the actual evironment to see what all of the colours would look like together. This color of pink for heather was new, as Jazz pointed out that she imagined her in a pinker dress. The colours of Rich and Joe were also Jasmine's colour  picks from the sheets. I've done a few mock ups of each, changing the saturation etc.

 The saturation was toned down for this one, and i think it actually works a lot better with the background. Not so sure about the colours working with the background though.

These were some of the colours i chose. I obviously was in favour of choosing drab browns, but i think in this case it works better with the mood of the overall shot.

The saturation was turned down for this one, and although i may be biased toward the colouring, i think it works best with environment colours overall.

Finished Character Colour Sheets

 The colour sheets were a lot of fun to do, and it's been about 6 weeks in the running where i've been pestering jasmine if it's finally time to do them. I got the green light. Keeping in with my usual style of colours i did mainly murky greens, reds and browns for Joe. The colours were also put down to about 15% saturation because we're thinking of having minimal colours for the film as well, just to try them out. I personally like the second from the right with the brown jumper at the top.




For Richard i chose a few more colours on the palate. There were purples and turqoise and blues thrown in there, all very toned down mind you. I took a lot of influence from google imaging businessmen attire, and found that a lot of em wear light purples and camp kinda colours. I still think the first on the left works best, as it's simple and straight forward. much like richard.




Heather Rose was probabely the hardest to colour, as i was trying to find those old lady coloured dresses, but also make it not stand out too much. I think the yellow or the brown works best in this film, as it ties in with the rusty kind of colour and feel of the movie as a whole. Although i played around with purples and lime greens, i just don't think they fit this kind of film. I gave a few of her glasses rose and yellow tinges which was a lot of fun, maybe to signify that we was stuck in a different decade?

Coloured Storyboards

So i've spent the last couple of days over the weekend drawing all the clean storyboards. It's actually been a lot of fun, and it wasn't as hard or time consuming as i imagined. I only stuck to basic, basic shading, using only whites or pale greys for most aspects of the pictures. Although it's a simple technique, i think it's pretty effective in conveying the mood and colour of each shot.  The 6 storyboards are in order.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpuE2wTdgF8

This is a video i just took of my brother playing guitar. It's an example of the song we're gunna use for the film. I think it works well because it had a good build up, then a really strong electric guitar come in. With drums, i think it'll work well.

Environment Adjustments

So after talking over a few things that needed to be changed, i set to work again on the environments. This time it was much easier as i already had a template. I re-traced the entire original bus stop illustration, this time drawing each level on layers, such as bus stop, mountains and city, and sky. The line work was made thinner, and i added a small perspective on the interior bus stop to make it look less flat. I'm really happy with this over. I've done five or so minor adjustments so we can now decide which one we prefer. This is the original without the sepia paper texture. I also changed the design of the mountains, making them jaged and less like my original style.

This is the original with the sepia texture up 100%, which i think looks really fantastic.

This is still my favourite, the sepia texture is on about 58% opacity, and i think this gives it a nice feel without dominating the colour.

All colours of the environment have been toned down to a minimal opacity, 10% or so. Not a huge fan of this one, i don't think it does much.

Experimenting with black mountains with white texture. I actually kinda like this, not sure whether i'm tossing up between the original or the black mountains. Probabely still the original, but it turned out better than i'd expected. I think they may stand out too much from everything else.

And my favourite, and the one that we will most likely use. I spent a lot of time on this one and i'm really happy with it, and proud of myself. I think the colours work well together and portray a really symbolic meaning.

First Environment Draft! YEAAAH!

ALRIGHT! so i've spent a good majority of the night designing what i imagined our environments could look like. We are still deciding between lino print or electronic. I think overall the shot looks decent, and i'm really happy with it. I'm imagining there will be changes of some sort, such as shading added to the bus stop, small things added and taken away. I put a paper texture over it, which i think adds a lot to the shot.

Character Height Sheet

Just whipped up a character height sheet lastnight. I put heather in the middle to balance the two males, plus, when we colour them, i'll change the two mens expressions from neutral to very uncomfortable, looking awkwardly at one another, which will also help to bring out their characters in the picture. Heather will be in the middle, completely unaware of the circumstances around her. claaaaasssic heather

These are the first concept storyboards that i roughed out. They tried to convey the feeling and movement of the film by building up to the climatic guitar scene, with a lot of close up foot tapping to build suspence. i think that's what's gunna keep the film going and the viewer watching. Jazz also drew up some storyboards, and we're collaborating at the moment to fitting them together, chucking unnecessary frames out etc.

 overall i'm real happy with the storyboards, but we've got A LOT of animating to do.

New Updates! Turnaround Touchups and Newspaper Logos

Have been working pretty hard over the last week or so, trying to juggle all of the assessment. So this is the first clean of the newspaper that Joe will be curled up under at the bus stop, showing him and his band at a much younger time, and establishing that he was in a band. It also shows the logo that will be the same logo tattooed on Richards arm. I called the band 'Heavy Hands' because of that late 80's/early 90's grunge scene that formed in portland, and those kind of mellow, murky names that came out of that time era. The skull was influenced from the Grateful Dead skull, but i also think the skull is awesome with the fire for some reason. it's badass in an ironic kind of way. I designed too other small logos incase we want to edit it.

These are the FINAL last clean turnarounds for our characters. There were a few small changes that needed to be made, such as Heather needed to have ears, as that forms the basic of one of the most climatic parts of the film. We also gave her a hearing aid to show that she was practically deaf, using the pixar film 'Up' for influence, as Carl the old man has a hearing aid in his right ear.

                                                                       Richards posture was changed dramatically. His belly was completely taken out to give him less of an aged effect, and also contrasting with Joe's belly, and his side on pose was considerabely changed from a weak pose to a bold, arrogant kind of chest stick-out. His extra hand was also added, holding the ipod.