The Story So Far ...

Here I have the rest of the research boards for the initial research into the five scripts for my parts. The first two images are those of the research for the ocean liner, the first props, and the second architecture. As with my approach to all of this initial research, I got a general and wide overview of the kind of items and artifacts that would be found on the ship; mainly for the scene where the doctor walks around the main hall, getting a good feel for where he is. Firstly there would be waiters and waitresses serving champagne and/or wine and whiskey, so I looked into various shapes of glasses. Then there's the lights so I searched around for 1910/1920's lamps for tables and floor, as well as looking into crystal chandeliers, which are usually found on ships of grandeur as a show of status. In addition to this there are bits of furniture like small end tables for the lamps and waiters trays, and small dining tables and chairs. There will also be odd bits of ornaments and showy items such as globes and fanciful flower arrangements.

The Ocean liner Props

Below is the research for the architecture for the ocean liner. For this, which as I mentioned before, was quite tricky to acquire images for. The colour images were from a fairly new ship the Queen Mary, which is a sort of similar style to that of the Titanic but it's not as showy. Some of the others are from old black and white photographs of what the Titanic looked like during and before sail. For the rest of the images I also researched into home interiors from the 1910/1920's to get a feel for the environments people lived in and were used to at this time, and some elements will have been taken straight into the ocean liner such as the ceiling decoration and the detail in and around the fireplaces.

The ocean liner Architecture

The next board is for the landscapes of Shakespearian London. This wasn't tricky as such, but research into this was limited, because as I had finished reading through the script there weren't really many instances that called for landscapes to be thought up. There was the view of Shakespeare's Globe Theater looking up into the sky during the day and night. For the day scenes I looked at blue skies dotted with a few clouds, and for the night scene, which is where the witches have used the words at the end of Shakespeare's 'lost script' to summon the rest of their kin; I looked at the Aurora Borealis as it has magical and unearthly qualities to it creating different swirls and curls. For the general scenes where we see an overview of London looking out onto the river and it's bridge, I researched into what the bridges had looked like at that time and found that there were many houses on them and another place for people to live as well as getting from one side to the other. I then looked at night skies which would have been black and clearly being able to see the stars (hard to imagine given current-day cities) with buildings dotted with small yellowy lights from the candles. I also looked at sunrises which also appear in one scene.

1599 London Landscapes

The two images below are those for the Louis XV script initial research: costume and architecture. For architecture I decided to go for a general view on the palace and not limit myself to early on, on just one part of the script; for example just looking at the interior of her bedroom. I especially liked researching this period of time as I love the costume design of the womens' dresses and the attention to a huge amount of detail in the architecture and with everything during that time. In order to research the clothes I looked into paintings of French king's and queens from that and around that period as well as period dramas such as Marie Antoinette.

Louis XV Costumes

The next image is that of the architecture research for the Palace of Versailles. Searching for these in books and on the internet blew me away as they're just amazing, there is so much detail in all the walls and ceilings. The Palace of Versailles, I would say is a mix of baroque and neoclassical architecture; it's features of linear pillars and some simple elements of build lend itself to neoclassicism, while the attention to small details and grand size lend itself to the baroque element of architecture. I looked at the relevant books with one Neoclassicism and Romanticism Architecture which had pictures of Versailles halls and detail, I also took images from other great halls which could also be implemented into the palace. The rest of the images, the front of Versailles, the view from the garden, and a few interiors and the detail of the statues in the hallway I found on the internet.

Louis XV Architecture

The final image board is the costumes I researched for the Pompeii script. This was another difficult area to research as there isn't really any physical sources of clothes they wore. I looked into Pompeii clothes and togas and not many images came up, so I then looked into Roman clothes and togas. A few more images came up on the internet but nothing to base any designs on. So I then thought about the items that will have survived like paintings and statues, and then I looked around for these images to get a good feel for the clothes they wore; searching wall paintings in Pompeii in homes and also Roman statues.

Pompeii Costumes

I really enjoyed researching the various areas of the scripts, costume, architecture, props and landscapes, and look forward to delving into even more research on the script I will be focusing on.

Pre or Post ... Pre!

Alright. So we're into week three and the big projects begin and this term we're given two options to chose from that we will be assessed on: either opting for pre-production or post-poduction.

The brief for Post-Production is to produce a 30 – 60 second piece that combines live action footage with hand drawn or digital element; working in small groups of 2+ capturing our own live footage, which is to be roughly storyboarded. For example this work could include aspects such as set-extension, green/blue screen footage, sky/object replacement and rig removal. So looking at the breakdown of movie scenes and advertisements for the visual effects would give a good idea of the stuff we'd be doing. The brief for the pre-production project incorporates elements of research, character and setting design and storyboarding. Working with five scripts from the revived Dr. Who, rather than dealing with the aliens and spaceships in the series, we will concentrate on the time travel aspect to allow opportunities for research into real places and costume design. By the end of this project we will end up with a pre-production bible for an animated Dr. Who episode for one of the scripts.

I have chosen to opt for pre-production, which is something I'm really interested in doing as a possible job. There is so much freedom in the design process, and how we interpret the scripts will be different and as unique as the last, since no two people have the same experiences, or even the same way they imagine how things appear to be. So this is a great opportunity to put my own take on how objects, costumes or scenes appear and should look from my imagination.

So far for this project I've created all of my design boards (A3 in photoshop) for the various areas I should be covering, which is: Pompeii's costumes; the ocean liner's architecture and props; Louis XV era architecture and costume; the Chino-planet props and; 1599 London's landscape. The hardest areas to research were the costumes for Pompeii and 1910-1920 ocean liner interiors (namely finding images for Titanic) this is due to the fact that these places have been destroyed and in ruins.

Clothes from ancient Pompeii will have decayed over the time in volcanic ash so there will be no hard evidence of their clothes. But as Pompeii is in Italy there is a fair chance that these clothes will be like those that were in Rome at that time; so as well as looking at surviving wall paintings in Pompeii for an idea of clothes, I looked into Roman togas and clothes as well. There is also not much surviving evidence for how the interiors of ocean liners looked, especially as it seems as though the script bases the setting on the Titanic so I looked at old photographs that have survived of the Titanic and other ships. In addition to this I looked into home interiors during 1900-1920 to get a good feel for how the architecture could be inside an ocean liner, but on a much bigger scale and of more grandeur (as most of the passengers on board would be the rich, and those who could just afford to travel across the seas). And this is how I overcame these problems.

Chino-Planet Props

As well as initial research I've also started a little bit of sketchbook on work for props, drawing my own designs and how I see these items after the research and reading the script.

The Animatic

Here's the 3 day collaboration project animatic:

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!

At the close of day one, day two of this project started. At this point in time we are about 2 thirds of the way through, which is kinda scary because the animation hasn't started yet! Busy, busy day today. Our writers finalized the script mid to late morning with the animating director overseeing it making sure are the scenes are viable for production and cutting out any bits that are too ambitious for the timescale. The script had changed, but not drastically; some parts were simplified and some that were too adventurous to produce were cut. The cut scene was the axeman one, I think it would have taken a huge chunk out of our time limit to produce all the elements to it, and there were also many poses of the characters, so it would have taken a long time to create these which would mean less time animating. The scenes with the wolf, fairies and elves have been simplified to recreate well in the animatic.

As designer, I have worked on the main parts of the style today, background design, and an overall look in line with the directors vision and we decided that while the storyboard was in creation and to the finalizing stage, we would share the workload of producing the concept art; characters, props and finalizing these. The images below show the initial four sketches of the backgrounds and below those the final four backgrounds that will be used in the animatic.











I think that these designs have turned out rather well and fit the design aesthetic we all decided on, I'm especially pleased with the way the last two images turned out with simplistic detail of the stream and the larger elongated shot. Three of these sketches had to be changed to fit in with the new, revised script that have included panning shots and the position of the characters changed. The first finished image had incurred no changes, apart from added a few aesthetic tufts of grass as with the others. The second image had to be changed to have no valley, so that the elf can sit in a small clearing; the third image just had to be extended to pan over or cut to the shot with the baby in a cradle, and the fairies carrying it away. The last finalized image, had to be extended to just under twice its size, for the purpose of a panning shot for the introduction: a welcome to the enchanted forest.