Degree Show Trailer

After the fall of the Kelpie, I took on some work for the degree show trailer that a classmate is working on. He needed a background and since I no longer had a film taking up all my time and some concept art to fill up, I thought what the heck. The film has a sort of comic film-noir feel, so I looked into that sort of thing and came up with a few bits and bobs before doing the background.

When it comes to drawing mobsters, is there anything more fun than fedora's under streetlights and tommy guns?

So I started drawing the city pretty straight up-and-downy and it was pretty damn boring. 

Tried to make the buildings squinty, but that still wasn't looking all that great, so I checked out the comic 'Spy vs Spy' that Calum referenced in the script, and was inspired to do a faded skyline, and to make the horizon extremely squint.

spy vs spy... in case you didn't guess...

some skyline style tests.

Spot the Godfather reference ;)

The final background, (complete with degree show film references) with a texture overlay, gradient, and colour corrected to more sepia tones, rather than straight up black and white. 

Concept art from the year

These terrifyingly bright ones are inspired by the works of Jolomo and Pam Carter, although I haven't achieved any of their beauty or finesse at handling (digital) paint.

Jolomo

Pam Carter

These were all early ones, working out how this whole textured, swirly-wirliness was going to work.

More Nina concept art

This is the sort of 'final piece' I've been working on. Le sketch of the attic in which Nina dies.

I changed the perspective to make it feel smaller and claustrophobic. 

And added grimy textures to add more atmosphere. 

I thought I was finished with the previous one but I decided to add Death in (in the same style as the film's character design). I tried some brighter colours and thought yellow was a nice angry and violent colour, but it wasn't quite working.

Dulled the yellow down a bit, shrunk him and added flowing lines as if he's materialised from the room itself. 

I decided that Niina needed to change style so I re-drew her in the same style as Death. However, i had some trouble making her looked hanged; she looks like she's just chillin' there. Also added shades of grey to Death, to make him look more corporeal.

Think I finally got the hanged look down. Added the shade to Nina as well, but more extreme as she's directly in the light from the window. 

Bombshell

I had to make a big decision today that I'm both happy and unhappy about; to drop Kelpies for the time being.


We have little over 2 weeks until hand-in and a month tomorrow until degree show, and we're barely over the halfway mark with scenes. Because of assessment (which asks for us to have 2 specialisms, with work on a minimum of 2 films with one of the specialisms, meaning that the films are technically not needed, as I could have worked on my specialisms by themselves instead of working them into a film) most of us in the Kelpie team are starting to panic that we don't have enough specialism work, and would like to concentrate on that to beef it up. That then leaves the 10 days after hand-in until the degree show, and even then it'd be pretty impossible to pull off the amount we still have left to do to a standard we're happy with. We will continue to carry on work with Kelpies after university, but unfortunately we won't have a film to show at the degree show. This saddens me greatly, but it would be far more disheartening to see a film I wasn't happy with being shown, and to have received a poor grade because I wasn't concentrating on my specialisms. This just really shows how important time keeping is, and that it's important to judge that there are certain challenges that are just too big (horses and water spring to mind, anybody?)!


Alas, it's a shame, but it's not the last Kelpies has seen of the world :)

Going back to scene 14

I decided that the hills in the version I thought I had finished were actually too flat, so I came back to it. I took the outline off, as the other scenes didn't have it, and added some shadows in. 

Also a colour key I whipped up for the others to use.

Rejigging backgrounds

This one is just fixing the background before I hand it over to Steph so she can do her painting thang (putting Murdo and the sea and the boat in etc etc, same as I've been doing). Again, overlayed textures, swirly-wirliness, clouds etc.

Colour corrected, as the one above was looking a lot darker than the other scenes. 

DOJ-CON

On top of doing animation and concept art for Dancing Nina, plus that, directing and more for Kelpies, I've been working to help organise DOJ-CON, a popular anime convention/degree show fundraiser. The most artistic input I had in it was designing the posters and flyers for the day (although this isn't all I did; think emailing/meetings etc etc). This was both fun and hair-tearingly frustrating.

The after-party poster/flyer

The flyer

The main poster

I'd like to say that none of the actual artwork was done by myself (we commissioned a couple of artists and they produced this lovely work). I just put the posters together, and fitting all that info in was way harder than it should have been.

Scene 6

Pretty much the same deal as before. Overlayed texture, render of the water painted over, Charlies rocks that I also used in scene 19. This is the scene what's really bright and sunny and unsuspecting of misery, and Murdo's rowing past 'his favourite islands'.

It was suggested that hills in the background looked too flat in the version above, so I added some shadows, and lightened the rocks a bit. (This is just a crappy screen cap so forgive the poor quality) Also with added boat (a 3D render to be painted on top of).

The finished scene, colour corrected, although I think it might be still a little too bright. I kept the lighting on Murdo similar to that on the characters in the interior scenes and  I also had to paint over the boat more than I expected as I had to move the oars and it was quicker to do it in Photoshop than to wait for another render to be passed to me.

Scene 14

I've had to do some editing to Charlie's background, because as lovely as they were, they weren't quite what I was looking for (I did still use some of Charlie's work here, so I'm not taking full credit for these). So a similar dealy with these as the previous ones; a render of the water and then painted over, a texture overlayed on the hills, with nice swirly wirly lines. 

This is the scene in which the mist starts to roll in and it get's awfy chilly and Murdo starts to get a bit freaked out, so I also added lots of misty cloud layers that can be moved about to get the effect that it's rolling in. The same with the higher clouds, the opacity can be turned up to make them look dark and menacing.

Update on the still image deelio

So this is where it's heading at the moment. I've been working with Charlie's backgrounds (the rocks are her work, but I've edited them), and Erin took a render of the 3D water and passed it over to me, and I worked on top of it, using a lot of splash shaped brushes. The render isn't necessary but it seemed silly to waste all those months of work on it, so at least this way it does make it into the film :D It does also make it easier to paint the water, as I just have to go over it with the appropriate brushes/colours.

And with Murdo popped in, textures added and colour corrected (although sans-oars at the moment). I'm pretty happy to carry on with the other scenes with this style. It shows the story fine, and looks a lot more how I envisioned the film in the first place (I felt we were kinda losing it previously, when we were still animating). Once we comp some rain in and put the sound effects on, the audience won't even notice it isn't moving :P

Kelpie Poses

Since the Kelpie is no longer being animated, I've whipped up some poses so the rigger can set him up ready to be dropped into the scene and for effects (water splashes and the like) to be painted on top.

Most of them are in non-kelpie style, and I've drawn the skellington in to make it easier for the rigger.

Concept

I've been working on getting the right effect with the still images. This has included a lot of mucking about with layers and effects, and for this one I've overlayed a texture onto the water and a separate one onto Murdo. I tried to do something with the boat but it wasn't going anywhere and I was getting frustrated so I just left it at that. In the final ones however we're going to be using the 3D boat that's already been textured.

Work on Dancing Nina

I've also been doing some concept work for Dancing Nina, which I realised I have posted none of on here.

A few sketches of Nina with a skull mask and those little wing thingies ballet dancers wear. I like the idea that as the film goes on this mask becomes more apparent until her whole face has just disappeared and it's only skeleton (although, skipping the grimy muscle parts :P ).

I also did some sketches (I have more in my sketchbooks but I'm terrible at remembering to scan them in..) of both Nina and Death with wings instead of arms. These ones here are more like bat wings instead of birds, as bats are mentioned in the original poem (by Halina Poświatowska, but good luck finding that on the internet). Wings are always elegant and I was particularly inspired by the final dance scene in Black Swan when Natalie Portman goes all feathery.

Another aspect of the poem are the colours purple and gold ("When death came, purple - golden, golden - purple as solitude") so I tried using those colours. I dismissed it pretty quickly though, it's not as grim and morbid as I'd like.

Another sketch with Nina hanging from fabric, as it entwines around her.

'Still image' references

I've been hunting high and low for some inspiration for these still images and our tutor put us onto these gems.

The opening scene of Ralph Bakshi's 'Wizards'...

The flashback scenes in 'The Thief and the Cobbler', Richard Williams...

And the dissolving/mixing between keyframes instead of inbetweens on Gene Deitch's 'Where the Wild Things Are' is something we're looking into for the transition into the still images in Kelpies.

I also stumbled upon the short film 'The Legend of Mordu' on the Brave DVD, and it is literally perfect for what we're trying to do. Beautifully digitally painted scenes with great animation effects on top!

Still images instead of animation

We recently had a production meeting with our tutor and we all decided that the speed of animation on Kelpies was going alarmingly slow. One suggestion was made that meant turning all the exterior animated scenes into still images, essentially like a glorified animatic. At first I dismissed the idea as I couldn't envisage it at all, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense! Keeping the interior scenes animated the way they were, it would make the exterior scenes more 'story' like, helping the audience to realise that this timeline was a separate one to the indoor scenes. And of course it would seriously cut down on production time.

We've decided to keep the 3D work in it, and just paint over it slightly to help it blend in with the 2D, meaning that the years work on the water and the models haven't gone to waste. We need to decide quickly what these scenes are going to look like, so I'll be working on some concept this week.

CeltiKelpies

So I whipped up a few concept pieces for the whole Celtic/Pictish thing I was thinking about, inspired by the concept art done on Brave, and the whole myth of the Kelpie.

They're not particularly accurate, nor done with great precision. I've being doing some sketches and trying out the methods of actual Celtic knotting and it is bloody difficult. I didn't get very far (it's all far too mathematical D: ). So these ones are just my own version of it :)

The Celtic designs have also made their way into the 3D Kelpie texture (done by Charlie Lodge), and it's looking swell!