7 Versions of 1 Style Frame

OK so this is all I really have to show for this week as far as progress (well, that and the booklet/new storyboard and animatic) (but I’m gonna feel bad about my lack of progress anyway). My excuse is that this is the last week of classes, so I’ve had to finish my last Writing 340 paper, finish work for this online class I’m doing, and also deal with my 3 other classes as well. But luckily after tomorrow (Thursday, April 26th, 2012) I’ll be done forever with WRIT340 and my online class, leaving me with simply some animation to finish up (CTAN302), some studying for CTCS201 to do, and THIS CLASS. Which will take up most of my time this coming week and a half, since A) I have a lot of work left to do on this project before I feel comfortable presenting it to faculty, and B) Working on Phantoms In The Dark is really really really fun. And I hope it stays fun for the rest of the coming year!

But for now, here’s some passes on a style frame!

 

Anyway, as you can see, these are 7 different variations on the same style frame. (It’s the final shot of the film when the kid is standing in front of all of his new monster friends and  he finally feels proud about it) And after much much thought on the matter, I’ve rounded down my style (as far as animation medium) down to 2 possibilities — either have it all be 2D Hand-drawn animation, or have it be a mix, with the kids+hero+mom+environments being 3D, and the monsters being 2D animation. I dunno, I’ll have to meditate on it a bit. But making styles frames like this will really help me come up with a final style…

More to come! And only a week and a half left! AAAHHH! Crunch time!

Presentation Booklet_v1

Included in this booklet/link is the following:

1 – Concept statement

2 – Visual Research

3 – Animation Technique research

4 – Mind Map

5 – Storyboard

6 – Current Animatic

7 – Current Visual Development – character design, environment, visual design

And here you go!

FinalBooklet_v1

Animatic_v3:

Animatic_v2, Storyboard_v5, + Designs

Storyboard_v5

Architecture designs for the house that the monsters will live in.

CharacterDesigns for the main character and his villain.

Aaand there you are!

P.S. I’m in LOVE with what I drew up for the female character (first page in the “CharacterDesigns” .pdf). It’s by no means anywhere near the final image of what she should look like (what I have now is wayyyy too vampy-sexual-vixen like) (and she doesn’t look young enough) but I like that I captured something that DOES have somewhat of a youthful quality, yet it’s also sexually attractive, and secretly bitchy (at least in my opinion) (It’s just something about those perfectly groomed big eyes and tiny button-like nose that makes you wanna hit her. Or maybe I’m just a freak for thinking that)

Anyway. More to come, of course! There will always be more to come. But for now, yayy. Progresssssssssssss! Time to relax for a day or two.

Fun Little Post

So this is just an image I want to post, but it’s an important image, I sense.

See, I work as a staff-artist for the Daily Trojan at USC, and I made this art to accompany an upcoming article. (Hopefully I’m not breaching a contract by posting this. Whatever. Not many people read this anyway.) The original was this:

And I admittedly WAS thinking of Phantoms In The Dark when I drew those blobby-ghost things, but I didn’t realize, as I drew the kid, that he’d turn out so… cute. I guess I was trying to draw a typical USC student, but it suddenly turned into what kind of looks more like a 10 or 12-year-old. And when I looked at this image right before submitting it to the DT, I realized that it looks kind of like it’s straight out of the PITD universe. So… I dunno. Just thought I’d share this moment. For all I know this could be going nowhere and I’ll go with a totally different design for the main character of my film. But this kid’s cute, and I’ll probably work him around and see what I can get from this kind of design. One thing’s for sure, though, he’s certainly better-suited for my film than that little monster I made for last week (look one post below)

But yea. There’s certainly more to come!

 

 

 

EDIT! I MADE MORE.

And instead of just making a new post, I’m just adding it to this post since I just did it anyway.

 

 

Make of it what you will. I basically just kinda worked from the original image I made for the DT article, and what I mainly learned is that I like those eyes that have the little things on the sides. Also, hairstyles. Lots of hairstyles.

 

I don’t fuckin’ know.

A Little Bit O’ Character Design

Hey! So as far as actual human characters, the one I’ve been mainly focusing on is (of course) the main character. So I did a head-turnaround of what I am thinking of doing for him so far:

And aside from him, the only other (important) humans are really the Mean Girl and the boy’s mom. That’s it. And aside from those three, there are the Mean Girl’s friends (who are gonna be more-or-less nondescript… I still need to figure out their general look/make it awesome, but I don’t imagine I’ll have to work too hard to come up with individual awesome designs for each of them…) and then there are the MONSTERS that the Hero will encounter.

Luckily, coming up with Monsters ideas is super fucking fun.

Now, the creatures I made in these two panels are mainly things you’d find in swamps or gooey, dark, creepy areas. Which is a good start, since the mansion where the Monsters are all situated is, in fact, a dark creepy place. But I want the monsters in Phantoms In The Dark to be marked with a tone of eclecticism as well; I want them to look sort of random, like it doesn’t make sense that all these creatures from very different backgrounds all congregated to have a party together. So I plan on working on making monsters that come from all sorts of other backgrounds — ones that come from the forest, ones that are from fairy tales, from society, from Heaven, from Hell, from a Heironymous Bosch painting, etc. etc. It’s gonna be bonkers. And I’m excited to keep working on it! This is the tippy-tippiest tip of the iceberg, people, and there is definitely more to come.

Storyboard_v4

New storyboard! Oh and dude, you really gotta check this one out — it’s got a whole new ending! AND an inserted scene. And basically the parts at the school yard are all altered in at least some way. And and and and… yea. Just check it out.

Storyboard_v4

OH and despite the fact that there’s an extra shot edited in, the whole ended up being shorter! Yeaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

More to come! I’ll be working on various shit tonight.

Shopping For Styles

Hey! I am wayyy behind in getting to this, but I’m finally getting to it, so yay.

 

Anyway, I’m still in process of figuring out the look for my film. Which, I guess it’s good that THAT’S what i’m struggling with, as opposed to struggling with getting my story to work. Story uber alles, after all. But style is still fucking important, so I’m kinda freaking out about that.

 

Anyway, I put together some PDFs of styles I found (I basically perused Motionographer a bunch) that I think would work, would NOT work, and styles that would work for the monsters/ghouls/ghosts in my film. Enjoy!

 

DesignsIDontLike

(Most of these are ones that I think wouldn’t work with my film because they’re too cutesy, and don’t match up with the edgy nature of my story)

DesignsILike

 

MonsterDesignsILike

(The first two ones in the Monster-Designs one are from the same film, and they’re done in a 2.5-D animation style. It looks like paintbrush strokes that got put into photoshop and then put into a program that can take image files and warp them in 3D space. It’s done very elegantly though to create these creatures out of abstract strokes and shapes)

 

So yea. I’m still not sure of what I want to do, medium-wise (A couple weeks ago I thought I wanted the kids to be 2D and the monsters to be 3D… now I’m thinking the opposite… and I’m sure it’s gonna change a few more times before I start working on it, haha), and it’s really my goal now to get all of this on lock.

 

Wish me luck, yo.

Storyboard_v3, Animatic_v1!!!

I had office hours with Mike this last Tuesday, and I originally wanted to talk with him about Character Design because I felt like I was lagging behind in that. He, however, had apparently gone through my storyboard and made a bunch of cuts/edits. Which was fuckin’ awesome! So I did pretty much all of those edits (there are still some problems with framing of a few shots) and so here you go! And it’s in a sleeker, 6-frame horizontal format. AND, more text. AND the text is more professional. Or at least it’s trying to be. I need to put in more stuff (textually) about sound cues, but I think I covered visuals. Anyway here you go.

STORYBOARD – VERSION 3

Aaaand, as the title of this post promises, I ALSO got a first-pass out on the Animatic! The sound levels are kind of wonky in some areas (most notably the scenes in the School playground) but other than that I like it. And the audio is me speaking into my computer’s built-in mike. Don’t be jealous.

Here it is. I apologize if your eyes and ears melt off: