Creating Spooky Scary episode 2

For a while now I have been trying to motivate myself into animating this idea I had in mind but I found myself constantly struggling trying to get it started. It was a more serious plot about an orphaned cub in which the story would reveal parts of his life as he grew up.

The problem was, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get anything to paper or at least very little.

In the end I decided to drop the idea and return to writing a comical script.

As soon as I made that decision it was if a barricade that was in way got pushed aside. I am now in the middle of writing the script for Spooky Scary Investigation episode two. But I wont scrap the design I had already completed from my first idea, instead I'm going to implement him into Spooky scary episode two.

Below are some of early concepts of creature

This is the final design (with what was going to be another character on his back)

I have also drawn up some character interactions and soon as I finished up writing the script and storyboarding it I'll post another update.

 

Credit Sequence

I haven't posted for a good while and that is because I have come close to finishing my film and I didn't want to reveal any more and spoil film.
What I can show is the end credit sequence which I have been working which involves have case come onto the screen show the credits through each page turn, but along side that I have posters of my characters on some of their other adventures.

I felt this would be the most interesting way of doing the credits that would also fit in with the theme of my film. Below is the video of the credits and still of the posters that I did.

Ultimate Image Development Part 2 13/04/15

Using my final concept as template I fine lined my work in flash and then continued to colour and shade it Photoshop.

Below are some of the screenshots I took during the development process but I have cropped them because I don't want to give away how I colour or layer my work.

Below is my final image (The text isn't part of the poster, it is there to stop anyone from taking it and reposting). As a whole I'm satisfied in how it turned out.

Ultimate Image Development Part 1 08/04/15

For the last few days I've taken a break from my final film in order to work on business projects.
This first of which is my Ultimate Image, which in it's simplest form is a poster which promotes your work as an animator or character designer.

When doing initial research for this project I took a look at the work from past students as well as looked at movie poster that are currently being used to promote movies out in cinema's.

(I would show examples but until I get permission from the artist I won't post there poster just yet)

After looking over my research I knew I wanted to have poster which incorporates the character I have created over the last three years of university. So after drawing a few concept I managed to narrow them down to one idea, then I refined that idea a bit more and played around with the composition to get my final concept (while getting general advice and ideas from colleagues and family).

(Final Concept)

Finishing backgrounds

I've have now completed the lining and adding the main colours to my backgrounds and the next step is to add textures and shading which shouldn't take to long (I'll mostly likely have them done by tonight) but I've already finished one which I posted below.

Each section is it's own layer for easy editing if needed and this will be the same for each ground.
Tomorrow I should be able to move onto doing key frames for the animation.

Background Progression

I've still been working on background and at this moment I've finished 7 out of 8 line works and 4 have been coloured (but not shaded or textured). I should have them all coloured by the weekend.

But I have also done a keyframe test on my first background to get an idea of How the animation will somewhat look like and I think it work when the background is fully finished and the animation has been smoothed out.

Starting my Final Project

Sorry I havn't update for a while, I've had a lot of PC trouble on my home machine (constant blue screens which lead to me buy a brand new motherboard and CPU), but it seems to be sorted out now.

Jump straight into my Final Project I've started creating the backgrounds for my flash animation and here are a few screen shots of my progress. I would of done a few more but as I mentioned before the PC troubles held me a bit.

I'm planning on animating the boulders on space background and I'm currently adding the shading to world background at this moment as well as designing the other background (8 in total). I'm going to add some textures to both but what your seeing above are still working progress and when I've finished them I'll upload them in a future post.

Reworking Dog Character

I spent my last weekend re-doing my dog character with very little progression, I try looking up and watching animated film which had dog character such lilo & Stitch and bolt to feel more inspired and generate ideas. No matter what I did I didn't like any character I designed.

Below are images of the ones I felt sorta worked but overall I didn't like them (no. 1 is the character I was reworking)

It was at number six I decided to just draw my number one again but with a more solid construction and I felt this is character I want to stick with and I need to spend more time getting on with my animatic and thumbnails. Below is my design of my dog character (although the colour isn't set in stone)

Background and character progression

 I've spent most of time trying come up with a background design for the alien and after many attempts I've finally settled on a theme looks which felt right, I've scanned in a few of the drawings which I'm going to use in my animatic below to show what I went for but I haven't coloured them in because it wouldn't be a good use of time at the current point.

I've also worked on the monstrous creature design a bit more and I feel happy with his current look (the image below) but I going to try a few more things before I settle completely. I've also been advice to do further work on my alien dog design which at I'll upload concepts of what I've change in future post.

Character Development: Alien dog and monster

After getting some feed back I decided to change the premise to where the Spaceman is victim instead of the alien creature and making the creature the hero.

New premise:
A spaceman travels to an alien via he rocket ship where upon landing is stalked my an unseen the creature which the spaceman takes notice and panics more and more as the creature gets closer.
When the unseen creature is almost upon the spaceman it jumps out of the bushes and is revealed to be an adorable alien dog, the spaceman in relief of this threatening creature leans on what he assumes to be a rock but is quickly revealed to be a large monstrous creature.
The spaceman runs for his life past the alien dog which looks to be oblivious to this threat and watches the spaceman run away, when the alien looks back he is face to face with the monstrous creature which roars in his face, in return the dog alien beats the alien roar in volume and power with a belch which knock's out the monstrous creature and the dog drags the body of the creature to spaceman feet as if he was playing fetch with spaceman, the space confused then looks at the camera and the screen fades to inside his rocket ship (in near future) where the alien dog has a collar and is named Bazzel.

Because the change in premise I had to redesign the alien a bit and this is the design I've settled on (but I'm still not sure an what colours to make him yet)

I'm still working on the look of the monstrous creature but these are few ideas I've come up with

Designing an Alien world

I still have a lot to do in designing the alien world, but this is what I have so far

I'm getting close to the design I want but I still need to do come up with a few more designs and then when I'm happy a design I can work on making it more presentable in how well it's coloured and drawn.

Project update from day to night

In my background colour project I've finished adding the shadows and lighting, so from what I can see the day time version of the background is complete

I continued on to building the night time filters which I can switch on and off with a click so the background can change from day to night a second. I had a lot trouble with since for some reason I couldn't get the masks to work and after an hour of looking through my slides and channels for any mistakes and watching tutorials encase I missed something I just suddenly worked. I don't know why or how I didn't nothing different but when I tried for what seemed to be 10th time I just worked.

So here is my night time background, the only things I need to do is add mist a texture to overlap the entire thing to make it look like a painting and add the spirals to the tree's

Showing my own art pieces

So I thought I'd create a blog to promote my own personal stuff as well give a link to where I upload it to.
Other then show everything I'm just going to put up my three personal favorites and I hope you like what see and tell me what you think along side any creative criticism. Some of the styles might change because I wanted to try something different and I'll do another post like this with my three more of my favorites but all my work can found in the link below.
My DeviantArt Account

 

Update on brief AA2S01 CW1

I finished the initial colouring of the background I was given and tomorrow I should be shown a tutorial to how to shadow and light my background as well being shown how to create night filter to turn my background into a night time setting.

Below is a screen shot of my progress.

I don't think it looks to bad so far and when I learn how to shade tomorrow I should be finished later on that night.

Starting Brief AA2S01 CW1

The class was given they're new brief today which included a tutorial on how to use certain features Photoshop (such using channels and organizing your layers correctly).

Our brief is to recreated the background below but keeping all the different layers separate so they can be changed as well as layers to create a night time theme.

At this moment I have gotten as far as cleaning the line work, colouring the line and half way through adding the primary colours of the image.

I'll keep update every major threshold I cross.