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