Wolf pup development

 Bimpe's concept art, we met and looked at this together and made notes to go ahead with, i decided i'd like to mix mine and her styles for the pup from this point forward, and asked her to carry on concentrating on the mother wolf character.

The white wolf in "secret of the kells" has a very appealing sleek shape and is very geometrically put together- i wanted this to be a big influence on my designs

Chris Sanders' animals are so cute, i took inspiration from this- also, my hope is that basing both human and animal characters on the same artist's style will link them visually.

I love Meg Park's wolves and dogs- again very geometrically built

 My rough photoshop sketches, trying to merge the styles highlighted above with Bimpe's work

 

Wolves are easier to draw from the side.... working out some poses for the film and to use in my model sheet- and trying different shapes.

 

Trying different shapes of eyes- i felt like some of these made him look too feline/ female/ angry/ happy all the time

 working out how to make him look less like a cat front-on: lengthening his nose. It was suggested that he looked a bit squirrelly in the far left one, but i love it XD

i'm happy with the look of him here- which was me sketching out a pose for the final scene of my animatic. He has fat front legs and paws now, with a much fitter looking body compared to my animatic pup. He has wide set, huge, round eyes (this part i have kept from my original sketches) a long snout and a geometric build made up of diamonds and triangles.

New(er) animatic!

Here we go again! Another animatic, now with slightly more changed timing, a timecode and a new ending! "ooooo"

I was spurred to make some of these changes when i peer reviewed my last animatic with people who hadn't seen any of the development for it so far. This was very useful: Kaitlin who is an experienced writer and storyteller gave me some advise about my ending- that i needed to show the emotions the pup was feeling- otherwise the ending seemed detached. So in this new version we see the pup's face in the final shot, and we also see the apple (both these things tie down the story nicely as the whole thing starts with them). Also in the new version i've added some ambient scary music towards the end, to fill the silence and indicate a tone of foreboding- i'm just trying it out- originally the plan was not to bother with a score.

New animatic

I finally made that better timed animatic with sound that i've been chatting about for ages -_- All the sound is free or just me...It's all meant to help tell the story, and help me understand the timing really!

Anna's Model sheet: Poses

ANNA’s pose sheet is finally clean and tidy

(turn around for reference only)

Wolf research & development so far...

After doing a little observational research of wolves from tv and reality i’ve started to refine the original storyboard sketches of my wolf pup.

I will be hoping to strike a balance between human and canine- especially in the eyes, in order to gain the most emotional range possible from my wolf pup. I also want to keep him stylized but clearly recognisable as a wolf pup- i feel like in my original storyboard sketches, he more closely resembled a cat….

The final design is still to be confirmed

What I did on my Christmas Holidays....

Recce number 2! This time: Templeton woods, and then on to Cupar for some wolf drawing :D

Photo and video credit to Adam Morrow

3D model is UV mapped and Textured (mostly)

3D Anna is partially UV mapped and textured (the most important parts of her are anyway ;) ) This is part of my 3D brief for Masters... the circles i textured onto her cheeks will be handy to track into a 2D shot involving a complicated camera movement. For more in depth development of this part of my brief check out my Masters blog Here.

Animatic Complete!

The 1st draft of my animatic that i put together from my (new) storyboard and some recce footage and photographs. There’s no sound at this stage which is a shame as a lot of the audio that happens off screen explains the story. The timing is also very rough but what is encouraging at this stage is that i am sure it’s too long in places- and yet the whole thing is only 2mins 30 secs… so it can only get shorter with refinement :). I’ll be working towards a 2nd draft of this with audio and improved timing.

Model sheet WIP

I've been putting together a model sheet for ANNA as i go along. This is part of my pre-production process and also in partial fulfillment of my 2D masters brief, heres where i am with it so far. If i have time i will tidy up the lines and such digitally and put it together neatly. I will also use some poses i gathered from observational drawing at pre-natal yoga and life drawing with our pregnant model, Megan. When complete, the model sheet will act as a reference for animators on the form and personality of Anna.

I made a 3D model of Anna!

This was a requirement of my brief, to model a character designed in 2D in 3D... so here is Anna, modelled in Maya with some simple shaders dropped onto her...

I may decide to use the model to test lighting and what not in her live action background or even as reference when animating a complicated camera move- for example to make sure she is accurate in a 180 degree turn. But just to clarify- i am still hoping to animate my short in 2D with live action environments.

If you'd like a better idea of my process for modelling her take a look at my  MSc Blog where there are lots of screen shot WIPs .

Turnaround & Character Design: ANNA

 Finally finished with Anna's turnaround! the "T" pose is mainly for the purposes of modelling her in maya- however she will be animated in 2D (digitally) so i included a relaxed 3/4 turn.

Anna is a russian peasant girl, she lives in a small village community near a forest where she and her neighbours gather food and hunt. She is 19 years old, recently married and 6-8 months pregnant with her first child.

While drawing my friend Megan, i asked her to wear a long skirt of mine around her rib cage so that i could observe the folds of the material around her bump, i really liked the look and changed Anna's design at the last minute. I was also persuaded to change it after drawing my storyboard and realising that conveying lots of movements would be difficult underneath a shoulder-covering shawl.

 Some costume decisions...

 In the end i dropped the front-tied scarf idea because i thought it made Anna look too old, i found out a head scarf would be essential as Fall of the Wolf is set outside; and after reading parts of "The Empire's New Clothes" i found out that headscarves were a sign of modesty and mainly all country girls and women in 19 Century Russia wore them. They became less common in the cities as other European fashions were absorbed into the culture there.

 I was inspired to design a shawl-type shoulder cover for Anna by one of the characters in "Zelda"- But also liked the idea of an empire-line dress cut like Chicha's (The Emperor's New Groove). Chicha is the only pregnant animated character i can think of. (I do not own the 2 images above)

Researching clothes worn by russian peasants ("The Empire's New Clothes") and sketching some basic outfits for girls...

Some very early google image drawing of pregnant bellies...