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!

More inspiration/references

I was reading the Art of Pixar's Brave not too long ago and noticed that in the concept stages the artists had designed a lot of character themed Celtic knots/motifs

(there are also some lovely bear ones but google is giving me nothing)

These reminded me of the land of Rohan from the Lord of the Rings, which is home to the horse lords, and so have lots of lovely horse motifs kicking about, and they're very Celtic/Pictish looking. 

For instance, King Theoden's sword has two horse heads on the hilt(?)

 And the Golden Hall of Meduseld has horse heads at the tops of the pillars...

as well as the flag of Rohan...

With all this, plus a class trip to Dublin and a visit to the Book of Kells, it got me thinking that since the myth of the Kelpies is a pretty old one, it would make sense that they would be depicted in Celtic or Pictish knots. I've been giving it a shot recently but it turns out that knots are bloody difficult to draw, as it's pretty mathematical, but it's something I'm willing to work at. With this is mind, we've been lending a more Celtic feel to the ongoing texture design for the Kelpie, and it's giving us some really cool results.