backgrounds... zing!

so im glad to say i have my backgrounds drawn up! was a lot of work but managed to bash them out in just one weekend. still not totally sure about how im gonna paint them yet, but its good to have all my layouts. next thing, start animating!

variations

Thought I would quickly share my thoughts on some of the various ways of painting my character. I initially thought of doing my whole cleanup and colouring within photoshop to avoid any issues with alpha channels and also to play with the software a bit to give an original look. I'm having some concerns over the amount of time this will take with my man character so above are some variations using lines painted within photoshop, original line art and no lines at all. its a bit of a headache, but not a particular urgent problem.

update!- below is just an animated test trying to put some of these styles into practice, although they may appear a little crappy on this blog player. I'm feeling the first two styles for their boiling fun look. the lineart on the third is way too heavy but equivalent of what I'm using for the dog. maybe lineart can work but looking at these quick test I'm thinking more towards the messy, suggestive colouring, hoping that the movement will still be readable.

Aesthetic Mock-up

ok this is basically the kind of look I'm going for. the idea is a loose painted style with the lineart fading towards the background. As you can see it is quite a messy picture which is my reaction to the traditional clean and controlled aesthetic of much animation. the background and the texturing on the characters is my attempt to bring a richness into the aesthetic.

this is kind of a compromise between a more abstract painting which lost the lineart detail and a colder 'block colour' style of traditional animation. in this instance the lineart is possibly too light compared with the heavy black lines of the dog, thicker lineart may give a more coherent look but could possibly detract from the animation and make the scene too 'heavy', more tests are needed.

character turn-arounds.

these are the turnarounds i have submitted with my pilot animation. i think they re looking ok but could do with being redrawn a few times to make them more appealing and simplified. also some research into hands and paws is needed

a relevant film

The Cat Come Back, by Cordell Baker, was suggested to me as a similar film.


I think this is a great film, although more comic and 'cartoony' than i was going for, but still it has given me some thoughts on how the male character, Tristan, should react to the dog

Concepts - Male Character

I have left the male character in my film for a while now, i have been partly avoiding him and concentrating on the dog because he is the star. However i have eventually started work on designing him. I had the idea of calling him Tristan which is a Greek name related to tragedy, but based on the style of my film- two characters in a confined flat, his name is pretty irrelevant. Anyway just to recap, an initial influence was the artist Modigliani. His portraits have distorted awkward faces and expressions which i think would give my man a distant, 'alien' look as well as complementing my arty aesthetic. This may however pose challenges with character animation and conveying emotion.


Below are some of my initial sketches. As a sad character i have kept him skinny and downcast, but tried to look for ways to give his body some substance.


I feel a lot of these concepts are over designed and also too detailed, as i intent to do the clean up and painting in photoshop. However, i like some off these as starting points, so i will start working with them on the computer to find an appealing and workable design.

A quick colour mock-up,

part 4

getting closer...