The finale of intensivness!

So it's the third and final day of our intensive project, and we've finished on time! It's been a long three days, and I don't think I've worked this hard for an extended period of time since the days of A-Level Art and looming deadlines. Today called for an early start, and as designer I was set the task of overseeing everyones character and props designs, and then going over them in my own hand, making sure there is a consistent style throughout the animatic; as well as changing them slightly to suit the idea of portraying them in 1950's-esque style and changing anything that didn't look right and in-keeping with the rest of the charaters. I also added a rather condensed colour palette to the characters, only having 2-3 colours and another tonal variation for the shadow, that is again still in-keeping with the way 1950's posters had colour on their characters, and giving depth of detail and they also work with the backgrounds in standing out; as well as injecting a small amount of style into the characters. Below i've included a few final images of what the characters look like on the animatic, I especially liked going over the wolf and creating the look of fur/hair. I had to do many poses of Timmy, as the storyboard called for different actions he was to move in across the scenes.






All in all I think this project went very well in the way it was directed and produced; Sarah and Tom organised us all well in giving us specific times in which to have completed, designs and finalizing designs; which I worked most times ahead of the schedule in producing the backgrounds, colouring them in, and also producing the characters (that were done over 3 and a half hours) quickly and efficiently so that the animators could work with them. As each character was done I would hand them over, so Harriet and Tom could start working out the animation according to the storyboard. In hindsight though, I should have started work on Timmy first as he does appear in nearly all the shots and we could probably have done a better job animating Timmy if I had, because he does look a little dead on the final product. However I do like the overall feel of our animatic, and love how it all came together and the way the characters moved across the scenes. In addition I think this has been an important project for us all in a way, to provide us with experience with working in groups again (having now learnt more about animation) which we all got on and worked as best we could. Also working with other people, (the writers) I think was important who had no idea about the way animation was produced and the limits of what the software could achieve within the 3 day time scale; as this will be the way in most cases how it is in the industry. Looking at other peoples animatics, I think a couple had a bit of an ambitious story in which to produce an animatic in such a short timescale, so I think it's important to maintain a strong link with the story idea and animation director to make sure it's just enough to be completed according to the timescale but not overly ambitious so it couldn't. Although I do feel that given an extra day or half day, specific for rendering, everyone could have produced excellent polished material as to how they wanted it.

Well done everyone, rest up before the next big thing!