Breaking up emu chick

Today I made the broken up emu chick in Photoshop and also added the emus to my colour palette.

Breaking up emu

Today I spent gathering reference images of emus and recreating my emu in Photoshop broken up in layers. Here it is beside the two characters.

Breaking up girl/boy front

Today I finished breaking up the front view of both my boy and girl characters. This included adding shadows and working on a colour palette.

Breaking up boy front

This morning I started breaking up the boy character. I have so far done the head. I copied elements from the girl and resized them to speed things up a bit. The eyes were especially a timing-saving and accurate way of fixing up the eyes because they are so detailed, which its shading. All I had to do for that was resize and remove the prominent eyelashes and then change the hue/saturation/lightness (mostly hue) to change the eyes from green to blue, this was a very effective method.

Placing characters in bg colours schemes

This morning I decided to copy the characters over onto the three bg colour schemes that I painted, to make sure that they worked well with the style of background.

The third background is by far the best of the three.

This first image the background is too messy and rough, it just doesn't have the right feel.


The second background, because of the darkground the girl starts to get lost in the background, blending in, it just doesn't contrast enough.


The third background feels lighter than the other two, and neater, and the characters stand out, but don't look out of place.


I've come to the conclusion, just based off these samples, that these traditionally painted backgrounds do work well even with the digitally painted characters. The background doesn't have to be painted perfectly to work but it can't be too rough. The characters need to contrast with the background just enough for them to stand out but not enough for them to look out of place.

Animatic 08

For this version of the animatic the changes involved the boy jumping at the bag. I played around with the timing, speeding it up a bit and reducing the movement to improve the feel. I also made the end scene last slightly longer so it fades completely to black.

Animatic 07

Last night I also made a few changes, I made the emu chick move into the frame when it first appears. I also changed the climbing the tree scene, so we don't see the girl climb into the tree and the emu races up to the boy as he's climbing, I also shortened the scene since there wouldn't be as much animation needed to be done within the frame to take up that time.

Animatic 06 - New scene -

I drew an extra frame at the end of my detailed storyboard, of the girl petting the emu. I probably shouldn't have done it on that page, but there's no point in using another page for one frame.
I added this extra scene to my animatic.

Animatic 05

This animatic is the same as my last version, except for the ending. Instead of ending with the children sitting in the tree, it ends with a sillohette of them riding on the back of the emu in front of the setting sun. If I were to use this ending I should probably add a scene where they are close to the emu or petting it.

Animatic 04

I saved a new copy of my animatic when I added more to the ending, so instead of escaping up the tree and staying there, there is an extra bit where the children discover that the emu chick was still hanging onto the food pouch and have to return it to its parent. It still ends with them watching the sunset from in the tree. I'm not sure whether something more needs to be added in the ending to make clear what's happening. I also added more movement for the children climbing the tree, to get a slightly better idea of the timing.

Animatic 03

I did some more editing of my animatic today. I made some small changes to the timing and changed the order of some of the images to clarify what's happening, such as having the emu chick not appearing after the close up of the boy's drawing. The other thign I changed was the direction of the camera movement in the first two scenes, making it move left rather than right. It didn't feel right the way it was, and I also checked which way the camera moved when introducing the scene in the segment of School Rumble I used as a comparison in an essay and found that it also moved left rather than right.

Colour Schemes

This morning I did some painting to start thinking about the colour scheme of the backgrounds. I've done three so far, but I'm not going to do any more until after I buy some new white paint, since mine has run out/dried up.

Mood Board

Today I tried my hand at creating a mood board. Not sure if I've got it quite right at the moment. I'll try creating some coloured images of specific locations some time soon.

Animatic 02

Finally up to date with my posts.

This morning I edited my animatic to adjust the timing a bit and make some additions, subtractions and other changes to make it more effective. I still need to edit it and add a few things for the story to make more sense, or to try out my different endings. The timing still isn't right, some things still happen too fast -especially the chasing. While other bits lag a little. Nothing that's too difficult to fix.

Starting the animatic

It took a while to break up all of my storyboards, but once that was done it wasn't difficult to import the frames into Adobe AfterEffects and start putting everything together. What I've done is try to combine frames from most of my storyboards to include the details I want and cut out what I don't need or want to change.
This first render of my animatic as it was yeterday morning has very rough timing and little editing. My main goal was just to put in the main parts to show the story, so I could start rearranging things from there. There are also story elements missing in the middle that may still be included.

Breaking up girl front

Editing the photoshop concept art of the characters. I seperated the girl and then broke her up into segements (head, upperarm, lower arm, torso, hips, ect.), so she can be animated more easily
I also added some expressions, different eyes, eyebrows and mouths. I made sure to make the eyes more detailed. As anime eyes are far more detailed than those of other cartoons I wanted to make sure I captured that.
I haven't saved any pictures of her yet, but I will do.

Expressions

Next I started drawing expressions for the characters. I started with a page for the girl and then did a page for the boy.

Struggling with story

I worried about the structure and content of my story. Not sure whether there was a climax, and what it was.
I looked up Story Plans/Sturcture in my Performance Writing texts from last year, and tried breaking up my story into parts.


Story Plan 1:
Start (action)
A couple of kids are sitting under a tree drawing in the dust.

Backfill (a quick who and why)
Boy eats some food, girl mentions that they don’t have much food.

Plot Devlopment (plot and characters slowly unfold)
Baby emu steals their food

Gradual build up (a problem to solve, good vs. evil – evenly matched)
Boy chases emu – girl tries to stop him

Huge tension (lots of action)
Mother emu chases children

Action climax (the moment of glory, the winner, problem is resolved)
The children climb up the tree to escape

Character wrap up (emotional resolution)
The children watch the sunset


Film Story:
Set up
A couple of kids are under a tree drawing in the dust. The boy complains of being hungry. The girl gives him a pouch of food. He eats it.

Inciting incident
Baby emu steals their food

Act 1 turning point
Boy chases

Midpoint
Boy is on ground big emu above

Act 2 turning point
The girl runs up and pulls the boy after her. The emu chases them.

Climax
…

Resolution, Denouement
…



Struggling with the climax and resolution still…then I read somewhere that short films usually end at the first turning point…
I also wasn’t sure how long it was going to be. I was told that 7-8 frames is supposed to be 30 seconds, so I tried to break my story into as few frames as possible just to tell the bare bones of the story. I also started thinking about what the ending and the climax could be if not what I had. I considered having the girl stand up to the emu, and she has the ability to speak to it and calm it..and then they ride the emu in front of the sunset, rather than ended up hiding in a tree. So the character has strength...and there is a direct confrontation...

Storyboard 3

After recieving some ideas about how to imporove my story, such as expanding the chase scene, where they can climb aeirs rock, go in a cave and eventually end up in the tree...or find a way of resolving the conflict, the next thing I did was a more detailed storyboard that included more camera angles and slightly different actions.
To introduce the food I made the boy eat some towards the start. Later he jumps at the emu chick to get the bag back, and manages to grab the bag and is then confronted by the emu. The girl then runs to him and pulls him away, they run away from the emu, over Ularoo, into a cave, and back to the tree which to climb to escape from the emu. They then realise that the emu chick was still holding onto the bag and they lower it down to the parent.

Character sketches and turnarounds

After completing my storyboards I drew some pictures of the emus, the adult emu and the chick; using a book on birds as reference. Then I drew turnarounds for each of the characters, starting with the girl and boy and ending with the emu and its chick.
Then just drawing the characters in different poses to think about their character.






I drew photoshop versions of the two children, coloured and shaded.




After the character design I starting thinking about the layout of the desert, sketching some images of landscape, and then of the kids sitting under the tree from different angles. Then I tried to make notes about their character, and research aboriginal names. Although I still haven't decided on names for the characters.

Storyboard 2

My second story idea involved something stealing their food. It couldn't be a mouse because a mouse wouldn't be strong enough to carry it. I had to think of something that was big enough to run off with their food, but small enough that the kid would chase it.
I decided on an emu chick.
It starts of the same as my other idea with them drawing in the dust, and the girl offers him the stick, while he is drawing an emu chick comes up and pecks at their little pouch of food, and then runs off with it. The boy is upset that the emu stole the food so he chases after it to get the food back. The girl chases after him because she doesn't think it's a good idea. Then the emu's father comes out the chases after the kids. To escape the kids climb the tree and sit there waiting, the emu ends up falling asleep, and they watch the sun set from in the tree.

Storyboard 1

After designing the characters I started thinking about the story and drew a story board.
My first idea involved my two characters in the desert sitting under a tree, the girl is drawing aboriginal symbols in the dust while the boy watches in fascination. The girl offers him the stick for him to draw with. While the boy is drawing the girl looks around a sees a mouse by a rock. She points it out to the boy who is so excited he runs over to take a closer look, or to try to play with it. The girl chases after him, to stop him from scaring the mouse, but the boy ended up tripping over and hurting himself so instead the girl sits with him and comforts him. A few drops of rain fall around them and she looks up at the cloudy sky. They are alone in the middle of the rain.

I didn't think this story was interesting enough and didn't really have much of a story structure as far as I could tell. It was kind of weird...

Beginning the character design

The first thing I did was start sketching the characters. While I was doing so I thought about the chase scene, who would chase who and why, which helped me to come up with the character design.

My current idea

My latest idea, that I'm still workin on now, when I have time, I came up with half way through April. After speaking to Jaime who suggested I think about what is Australia and what is anime in order to combine the two, to make an Austalian anime.

She suggested kangaroos, koalas, aborigines, aboriginal symbols, for Australia.
Kawaii, mushroom cloud, growing plants (rebirth) for anime.

Finally for me to try to come up with a story (storyboard) that includes two characters, one wearing a kangaroo hat and the other a koala hat and a chase scene.

Return to idea 1

I ended up returning to my initial idea, of Anitopia, which was the story I wrote for a game design document. But it was really a story of the world and how it came to be the way it was. It didn't really introduce any characters and I didn't think it would be a good indication of what the series would be like, if one was created. I did do a lot of work towards this idea though, I drew many characters and even got to the point of an animatic. But it would have been too much work to get done within the time restraints and it didn't have the structure of a story.

These are some of the sketches that I did towards this idea:






With this idea I even got as far as making an animatic...although as I said I wasn't really happy with it in the end.

Idea 3

Another idea I contemplated was animating a short story that I'd written which had been accepted into a literary journal last year. I designed the characters for it, but I wasn't sure that my drawing style would be be able to adequately capture the creepy mood of the story.

Idea 2

The second idea I considered was using a group of characters that I designed in VCE and making a story. Of course I ended up outlining a series, and it didn't seem like I'd be able to come up with a story that could be portrayed in less than five minutes.

Deciding on an idea

I struggled with what I was going to do for my animation. All I knew is that it had to be short and I had wanted to use an idea or characters that I already had, because I thought it would be easier and faster. Although the idea I'm at now is a completely new one, but more on that later.

I considered using a concept that I've had since I was in early high school. Using some of the animal characters but needing new characters, and using the story that I developed for a game design document in 2008, instead of the one I'd worked on in primary school. The only problem with this concept was that it was too vague, it would have ended up too big. The story wasn't simple enough.

I thought about doing an animated version of a short graphic memoir that I created last year, for a creative writing class. I decided against this idea too beacuse I didn't think I should be doing something that is about me...and it would probably have ended up too long.

Another manga that I completed in 2007 for my year 12 folio would also have ended up too long. There's only so much time I have to work on the animation and the longer the animation is the more time and effort it takes to complete...

Introductions

I'm doing Creative Arts Honours at university this year. My major project consists of a creative project, which will be an animation and an exegesis which will be regarding the concept of Australian anime, whether it is possible/acceptable for anime to be made outside of Japan.

I struggled to decide what my animation would be about. But I finally have a concept that I've started working with. I'm still in the preproduction stage. But now that I don't have any other assignments or essays to do I can focus on my main work and spend a lot of time on it.

I'm going to spend the next few posts getting up to date with how I have progressed to get to the point I am now.