Character comparison and silhouettes

Now that the turn-around for each character is done I put all the characters together for a size comparison, and I also silhouetted them to show that their shapes work against one another.

t.lucas

plant turnaround colour

Here are the completed plant turnarounds, cleaned up in Flash. One for the plant in its original state and one for when he grows enormous.

t.lucas

Suzan - turnaround colour

I also finished a colour turn-around for Suzan. Again, I wanted to place it on a suitable background, however I only had one finished interior ship background and its a close-up of a view screen, but the colour scheme seems to work.

Again, any comments on the colour scheme would be really helpful.

t.lucas

Ted - turnaround colour

This is the colour turn-around for Ted, cleaned up in Flash. I also placed the turn-around over one of the finalised backgrounds to make sure the colours fit and that Ted stands out.

I hope you like it. Any comments on the colour scheme would be most appreciated.

t.lucas

Further development work.

Here are some more pieces I did over the weekend. I probably won't colour these, not in their current state at any rate, I may clean up the science test ideas pages and colour them. Those ideas will also be going into my storyboard. The ideas are all coming together in my head! I can't wait to get back to the film proper tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy and as usual, any constructive comments are very welcome!

t.lucas

Yesterdays drawings....TODAY!

Our After Effects project will be over and handed in tomorrow, and being up to date I spent the weekend on pre-production for my film, which starts again this week. I wanted to work in a different style, I went very angular with my shapes and decided to go for minimal line showing. I'm quite happy with the results, I thought more about composition here than detailing and I quite like the poses and staging that I got out of it.
I hope you enjoy.

t.lucas

Expression sheets

Here are the other two character's expression sheets. Unsurprisingly it is very difficult to show emotion in a character that only has one eye and no eye brows or mouth. I think some of the expressions are more successful than others, I feel I can get across happy, sad, cute and angry looking expressions which are the predominant moods that the character will be showing most of the time. As for Suzan, I'm pretty pleased with her expressions in general. Facially I feel I can get a lot out of her emotionally. Her head is very bendable and her big eyes and mouth can convey a lot of moods.

t.lucas

25 expressions - Ted

I decided to do the 25 essential expressions sheet today, I decided to go over them in Flash to see them how they would look in the final film. Some of these expressions may even make it into the film.

t.lucas

Character action/expression sheets

Here I have some character action and expression sheets. I tried to cram the page full of smaller drawings than I usually do and I feel like I got some really good poses out of it. Will come back to you with selected pieces from here coloured and cleaned up. I hope you enjoy.

t.lucas

 

 

New layout backgrounds

Here are some more completed layouts. They aren't necessarily finalised just yet, for instance nearly every one will need some after effects added but otherwise the general layout should stay un-changed.
I hope you like them and if not then please tell email me with any suggestions.

t.lucas

Some layout/backgrounds

I've spent the last few days working on the backgrounds from my storyboard that I felt were almost there composition wise and I have now cleaned them up and coloured a few of them.

Here are two of the coloured backgrounds.

t.lucas

Thumbnail/Storyboard

Recently finished my rough thumbnail storboard. This are just an indication of the shots that will be in the film, but it has given me an idea of the timing. I really enjoyed boarding this film, my previous film was a one shot piece and it became very tedious to draw by the end of the board. As a full film and narrative, this piece is naturally more interesting to draw and I have also designed the characters with more care this time so they are easier to draw and move. I will be uploading an animatic soon, for now, here is one of my favourite scenes in the storyboard.

t.lucas

Pre-production development

 Here are some turnarounds for my now finalised characters. I've simplified Suzan (the new name for the female engineer) and I feel that she is now a lot easier to draw and I will be able to animate her more quickly and get more interesting poses out of her. As I have said before, I wanted her to be an inverted shape of the male scientist (Ted).

For the plant I have a turnaround for both stages of it's life, the small, cute stage that it is in when first discovered and the huge, grotesque stage that it morphs into by the end.

I hope you like them and as usual, any comments or constructive criticism is very welcome


t.lucas

Plant creature breakthrough!

After finishing the femal character I moved onto the plant creature, which I haven't been happy with for some time now. The design just didn't seem to work for me and I couldn't see how it would move. So I played around with the proportions for the first time in a while and came to something that I really like, and the design instantly gives me an image of how it't going to move. Also, because the plant is so fat and round it gives me more ideas about the personality of the plant and how it will act. It also has the capacity to be even cuter when its just a budding flower when the astronaut first finds it.

t.lucas

Female engineer development

I spent today developing and trying to finalise a lot of things for my film. The main thing I wanted to do was finalise the female character as the male character was a lot further ahead than she was until now. Her design is dependant on the male character who I designed first so it wasn't as long a process to develop her look.

Here are a couple of head development pages for her, it is the very first head that I have decided on and is the one that is in the earlier in-situe drawing that I posted.

 t.lucas

More on the new ship design.

As you can see, I have come up with a new ship design, and today I drew some more in situes for it and also a size comparison with the two main characters and the moon buggy.

t.lucas

Background design

I've always been a bit scared of colour design, until now I've not put too much thought into it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For this film I really want it to be spot on. I want to work with a limited palette of complementary colours. My art strand friends in uni have helped me a lot and one of them gave me the link to a very useful website "Color Scheme Designer" and it has really helped me get the colours dead on. 

So, using this tool and the advice of a few of the art strand team (you know who you are!), here is a layout piece I did to get an idea of the colour scheme I want. I'm very happy with it and I think it could work for the whole film.

I hope you all like it and thanks a lot for the help guys.

t.lucas

Pre-Production

Now that the flash project is over and handed in, pre-productions for our films begins! This week I've been working to pin down characters that I have been working on over the summer and I believe that they are very close to the way I want them. The male and female characters (who are still nameless for now) are practically ready to go. Also, after sticking with a certain ship design for a few months now, a piece of research changed my view on it and the design has since changed somewhat.

This is what I have so far from this week.

 I'm still working on the colour schemes, which will come across in the colour script soon. This is just for an idea of the style.

 Once I had designed and felt comfortable with the designs of the two characters seperately, it was suggested to me that I should begin drawing them together to make sure that they work together on screen. To that end, I decided to draw this in situe which is also one of the shots that will be used in the film. I feel the the two characters do work well together. I designed them so that they would each be an inverse shape of each other. so whereas the male character curves outward, the female curves inward. I also made sure that certain features such as noses, eyes, hands and fingers all worked within the same universe.

 This is the new and improved ship design. The design was originally very rounded, but after doing some further research I decided to make the ship a lot taller and thinner. The whole film is supposed to be geared towards a younger audience and I feel that this newer design is just ridiculous enough to be funny but is still grounded in some possibility.

 And finally, here is another in situe piece for a idea for a scene. At some point while the plant is being experimented on there will be a time lapse of the plant growing, while the male scientist appears to run around wildly doing tests and such, however there will be a few shots where he has down time, has a cup of tea, reads a book, has a nap and so on. This is just an idea for when he gets up to go back to work. I also started to like the idea of making the space suit blue because of this image. Because the panet is going to be made up of a lot of reds and oranges, it makes sense that the space suit would be a cool colour in order to stand out from the background. Also, the blue will fit in with the current colour of the ship.

I hope you enjoy this stuff and as usual if you have any comments or recommendations please don't hesitate to contact me.

t.lucas

Happy First Contact Day!

This is the finished version of "Happy First Contact Day" with a few changes and enhancements.
It was basically just a matter of tweaking a few things to add a bit more polish.

I hope you enjoy.

t.lucas

Some character in-situes on the side!

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. This is entirely due to our current flash project. Rest assured, when it is over there will be a regular torrent of updates as we start the pre-production for our films!

Just to tide you over, here are some in-situes for the main character in my film. The character is still not finalised but these show a few of the characters mannerisms and emotions.

I hope you enjoy.

t.lucas