Playing with colour some more

Thankfully, I kept to my schedule which meant that I have this week before deadlines for contingency. Continuing with the feedback I got from Zoe I decided to do a similar colour/clothes test for Tcosta that I did for Nim yesterday.
It was a lot of fun.

I felt that because Tcosta is a student before he met Nim I felt like he'd be keeping to himself, reading. I also felt that being from the city he'd have far better technology than Nim's village has access too, hence why he is reading more of a tablet device than a book.

Working more on said feedback

After receiving feedback the other day I did some experimentation with the colours of the characters. I figured I would also do some more for Nim because I felt like I had so much more concept art for Tcosta than for her.

It was quite fun actually :) . Due to the Scarryon not having genders like you and I, I felt like nudity wouldn't be so much of a deal, however, because it will be shown to a human audience it most likely wouldn't be appropriate.
I drew her in a dancing pose because I imagine her character to enjoy dance so when I was drawing clothes for her, I wanted to pick outfits that would enable her to move freely so that she is able to dance without restraints.
Playing with colour was fun and interesting but I felt that it didn't fit with the world that they inhabbit in. I also imagine that coloured fabric is awfully expensive to make in cascorth and so only the Black Scaled ones are able to afford it and the more colour that one has on themselves is a sign of how important they are.

Presentation

I did my presentation today to Zoe and to the rest of my class.
I tweaked my previous presentation a little bit so that this one was more focused on the process of creating my idea rather than the idea itself.
Due to this change of approach I cut out a lot of the story and background information and added in other things such as the mood boards.

EDIT: So after doing this presentation Zoe emailed me, she said that the work I'd done was good (she's awesome) and that I should work on showing everyone that I thought about the colouring of my characters and didn't just slap the first one that I touched, so I did just that and I had a bit of fun in the process  :3 .

*Ugly Tears*

I have done what I needed to do.

All together but not yet quite done

It totals to five seconds and twenty frames: five frames off six seconds.
I'm well within the safe zone meaning I can go back and fix up the animation in the first shot, finish the colour and maybe even add in some shadows and highlight due to the fire!!! AMAZING! YAY!
(but i gotta do this all before wednesday for a presentation to mel)
here's zee premier screenshot because screenshots are swaggy af:

there you can see the three shots and their length. I'm going to add the soundfile to it all at the end so that it feels super finished.
I'm very excited! YAY!

So here's a thing i forgot to do:

I believe i mentioned this earlier about how i did a presentation to a stranger in a strange place. The feedback that was given to me meant that i extended my storyboard and reworked on it a little bit harder.

It's got quite a lot of the early concept art that i realised i also didnt post (i had ONE job) which i figured would be interesting as my alien race as developed and come a long way since the first drawings.

Update!

Okay, so i decided it would be better to move on and make sure i reach at least five seconds before returning back and fixing up the line work and adding colour. I know my work would not be gradable if i don't reach the minimum time.
this next shot was nice and refreshing because it was short and didn't have nearly as much animation going on as the first shot that i made.
I do really need to fix tcosta's head though... it looks like he's wearing a mask XD which is not good, no.

whoooaaa! you're half-way there!!!

i'm quite literally livin' on a prayer to get this done on time.

Animation so far-Tcosta floats!!

This is my animation so far.
many changes need to be made (the fact that Tcosta is so awesome, gravity can't even hold him down).
Also the fact that his head flies around a bit.
Gonna show it to my squad and see what they say- theyll give me some cool pointers ;3

So this is gonna take me longer than expected- regret

I coloured the first frame, colouring surprisingly didn't take too long, that's the fun bit. Animating these over complicated characters ic the long bit.Like oh my god the regret XD.... it does look pretty though, so at least there's that.

At least I know how they look roughly with the background i made.... awesome :3

OH MY GOSH I AM SO DUMB!

So
You know my last post where i wrote how lame backgrounds were and that i didnt care much for them.

I am a fool.
A CHANGED WOMAN!!

I decided to add in the background to see how it looked and BOOM!! at lest 20% better just by doing that- mind blown!!

Have a look and you'll see!

BACKGROUNDS!!! (about damn time charlotte!!)

After Ali posted her blog link in the chat for feedback i felt instant shame. She'd done soooo much work!!
so, taking a leaf (quite literally as she put a leaf in her background and played with the colours (hahaha (spoilers if you haven't read ali's blog yet, she did that) ) ) out of her book I decided to do a similar thing.
I tend to avoid backgrounds, I'm not very good and instead of working on it, i run away from it instead.
but i did it,
i drew it, played around with some filters and colours,

This is the background with no filters or anything altered to it.

 I darkened this one and added an orangy-red hue to it, I wanted to make it seem like there was fire about somewhere... it wasn't very successful XD.

 It then hit me to add a shadow under the house because i am an idiot and i am slow on these things.

This one looks very orangy,

and this one i dont like at all.

Maybe I shouldve added my character's to the background to see how they looked in it....

I took a book out of a lot of disney 2d animations where the background it often line less and painted in. Mine does not look that way at all... but I managed to get the lineless part right at least....

I felt like because my characters are very monochrome with very little colour, my backgrounds should have a little bit more colour to it. I also felt that Nim's life and world should be more colourful and vibrant than Tcosta's. Tcosta lives in a structured city with loads of rules, social expectations and regulations. There is limited freedom and creativity in his world in comparison to Nim's.

TIME TO ANIMATE!

I decided to animate this section here. I wanted to do so because it features both my characters. I felt that it was a cute tender moment where I'd need to explain and tell a lot without any dialogue.
I've only done little ball and stick men to help me get the timing for the first bit, Once I'm happy with the timing I'll start out drawing the key frames and move onto the inbetweens etc..
I think I'm gonna work on my backgrounds now, give my mind a little break from animation.
As I was animating, i realised that to give Tcosta the wight of his body i needed to give the shot more time, make it longer or the information would happen too quickly for the audience. Placing my animatic as a video layer in photoshop was helpful but I will need to update my animatic and storyboard because i just need a few more frames.

I've got something- Finally!

I had to stop myself halfway through, well more like 3/4 of the way through because I started adding in more screams and it got kinda scary.
I do like the music though! It changes mood and pace so well with my piece.
Does need polishing though, again, I did stop towards the end as unfortunately i have a lot of feelings. :/

Playing with noise

I've been recording a lot of Foley sound for my animatic. Fore fire I rustled a lot of wrappers and paper, I also followed Ali around with the Zoom because she had a cough. It was nasty for her but it would gold dust for my piece.
After talking to Chris Mann, he suggested that I should look into apple-loops for some music, percussion especially. He also said I should source a scream online so that it is much more impactful.
I also realised that my piece is very weak in the mid-range section, it lacks the rumble which you would normally get with fire and with folks running around gettin' squished by trees.

I killed a baby with a tree

I eventually got there and remembered to put in a time code, my animatic is now double in length- WOW! It's crazy how adding a few more shots here and there changes the entire viewing experience.
well.. it adds a lot more context to the scenario. I think it also develops Tcosta's character so much more because now it is clear that he is making a huge and weighty decision. The audience may not know what the decision is but they are able to dicier the fact that he is running from something, or running away from something more like.

so....i killed a baby (and redid my storyboards, well... added some more)

so... i redid my storyboards again...sorta

after doing the animatic... three more times, i couldn;t get it working in a way that i liked.
So i added in three more shots (that was so annoying having to move stuff around XD ) to slow down the pace of the scene. I hope that the music will sort it out a little more because i feel like the pacing is rather off, like some shots being too long etc.
maybe showing it to ken tomorrow will give me feedback on what to improve.
I also deleted the 'to be continued' shot. Although it added context, it felt very cheap and forced for me to have it in.
so here's my new storyboards, i still haven't gotten round to thinking of a title and i feel like the times for each shot is going to change which is why the duration has been left blank.

and here''s the animatic whooo!

I'm on a roll today (tonight)

my first animatic.
i deleted a shot towards the end of Nim because I didnt think it fitted too well. I'm also thinking that certain frames need to be longer as it all goes by in under 30 seconds which is a little crazy to think about and even more so to take in.
I'll  update my storyboards and play around with the timing later.

NEW STORYBOARDS! YAAAAAAY!

Okay, so it is missing a lot of vital information.... *cough* the timing *cough*.

However, I am so, so, so happy that I didn't go with my first storyboard. The first one is always the throwaway. I feel like this one represents Nim more honestly, the other version was jarring and confusing for her character.

This one also sticks with the theme of love, it's a little cliche i know...like, who attempts to make out in the middle of a fire?!!? Alienz.

Also, I figured that since my piece is a scene from a TV series it would be left on a cliffhanger so that folks watch the next episode... which would never come out but no matter.

Also, yes, that is Papyrus font at the end.

Storyboards

okay, so upon reflection, I feel that the storyboard I've created doesn't stick true to Nim's character... my god Thomas' ruined me... Due to that I am restarting this task and doing a different scene, a scene that will look cool, awesome and at least 20 % better... maybe I'll include fire, because apparently I don't hate myself enough

expression sheets

I guess I should've probably done this before doing my storyboard but at least it'll help me when I go back refine it, work on the animatic and then eventually the actual animation piece.
I might need to add in a few faces here and there to expand on the amount of expressions that are currently there ( I've only got nine on each :/ ).

Storyboard work

This is my story board so far, i decided to do Nim and Tcosta's first meeting. I have yet to add the timing or any written descriptions, I feel like there are a few frames that i need to switch and change. I also stopped halfway through the scene because I got to page six and I noticed that things are getting waaay too long xD.