Character design

The first design I came up from the silhouette

Character design

Some quick colouring, minor changes and quick experiments with one of the silhouettes.

Character design: silhouettes

Some experiments with shapes takes out of Natzi uniforms. these are three silhouettes I came up with for the design

Final Plane Designs

These are final designs of our prop, which plays a very important part in our animation. We had to design the changes that the toy plane went through.

 

'War Plane' Animatic

This is our final animatic with the sound effects and music by Frederic Chopin: Nocturne 20. Next we will be focusing on transitions between the scenes, and creating pre-viz.

Character design: faces

Character desing:simplifying the character

Presentation Storyboard

This is our final detailed Storyboard that will be used to make an animatic. Right now we are looking for suitable soundtrack and sound effects that will go with our story. (:



Nazi Germany Concept Art

This is scene from the beginning of the story after the boy leaves his house to discover that his home town has been covered in red flags.

Character concept: main character in concentration camp

Character design: final concept 1

Main character concept

German City Ruins Concept

This is one of the environment concepts. It is for the scene after the concentration camp gets bombed and the young boy ends up back on the streets of Germany which now show the full effects of the war. These ruins will change into the 1950s environment of our animation climax. Hopefully the paperman inspired, 1940s printed style is evident!

Process of the environment will be posted up soon :)



Character sketches: SS police man

Character concept

Super Furry Animals - It's Not The End of the World?

Another bit of research, this time into how elements of animation can fold up/down to deconstruct and construct scenes. This is so clever! It may prove useful for us figuring out how we are going to transition between our scenes.

1950s Iconic 'All is Well' Street Thumbnails

During the drop in photoshop session yesterday Photoshop Phil sat down with me and we really looked into the 1950s environment for the ending of our animation. Phil helped me understand the compositions of these streets and what makes them recognisable as these environments. I then got on with some thumbnails experimenting with placement of these elements.

Feedback of which thumbnail is working best would be much appreciated!

 

 

Colonial Street & Iconic 1950s Cape Cod Housing

After Alan's suggestion I took a look at Universal Studios' Colonial Street to help me with our 1950s concept.
Instead of setting it in America we have asked ourselves what settings are iconic for the 1950s?... It does however end up with most iconic scenes being generally American. I noticed a regular use of a certain type of house during the 1950s which does also feature in other countries such as Austraila, Canada and a little in Germany. I found out that these houses were called 'Cape Cod' and after a bit of research into their use in the 1950s something really interesting popped up.

These types of houses were offered to soldiers returning from World War II so I think it would be very suitable for them to be used, representing not America but the change the war caused. Also, these houses would automatically scream 1950s to the audience making our change from 40s to 50s a lot clearer.



Edward Scissorhands' 1950s Stylised Environments

Steven and I had a good long talk about our projects yesterday and when we were talking about the change from 1940s war setting to the 1950s atomic age he reminded me of the strong visual sets of Edward Scissorhands. Perhaps something similar with layout and colour could represent our change to the 50s, with an atomic bomb finally going off in the background and taking over.



1950s Environment/Buildings

To go alongside the atomic age research we have looked at 1950s buildings/ technology such as the development of nuclear plants to assist us with our concepts. We have decided that setting our climax in American 1950s would be best because it is so iconic of this age and would instantly be recognisable. This will also allow our message of war continuing to happen everywhere get across better than if we were to keep Germany as our setting.



Concept 1

First of the concepts, however it's to 3 dimensional, I am going to make it more generic and 2D looking

1950s Atomic Age

It was suggested that we focus on the 'Atomic Age' for the climax of our animation rather than jumping to modern day as it would flow better and connect from the 40s just finishing.

A little bit of research has been done just to get us into understanding the time of the atomic age better so that we can really represent it accurately.

-Period following the detonation of the first atomic bomb. (1945)
-Followed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
-Seen as first major use of nuclear technology.
-Changes in technology development.
-Ushered in more progress and modernity.
-Introduction of power plants.
-1950s atomic age brought optimism of nuclear energy making other sources of energy obsolete.
-'Age of peace'
-But also fear of possible atomic attacks.

1940s/50s Colour Palettes

To help us develop our animation world more we have looked up colours that were common in the eras we are looking at. This should hopefully help us really get our character down as there is definitely something missing we just are not sure what!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Character outfit test

Character turnaround

Character sheets

Prop test

Hair colour test 

Key facial expressions

Skin tone test

1940s/50s Era Graphic Style

During our last tutorial we talked a lot about style and getting the artwork of the period to marry together with our character and environment. We have put together an influence map of the classic style of this time trying to include artwork which incorporates characters as well so we can work out how the artists have managed to blend the two together.



Possible Sound Effects

We have been starting to gather sound effects and music for our animation so that we are prepared and have a good amount of time to allow for changes because this could be a hard part to fit in with our animation.

I have gone through the script and found sounds for those that I can tell we will need to add atmosphere.

Clatter of dishes


Cheering


Police Whistle


Marching


Fire Burning


Smashing Glass






Planes overhead (Propeller)


Bombing

Logline, Step Outline... Version Three

I have also edited our other writing including the step outline because it has always been useful to go back to when we are not looking at the detail.

Pigment Studios: Narrative Step Outline Version Three

Script: Version Two

I have edited the script to include changes that were made during the storyboarding process and after talks from our third tutorial where it was decided that the jump to the modern 21st century was too sudden whereas, changing to the 1950s at the end fitted nicely.

Pigment Studios: Narrative Script Version Two

Prop Designs

These are the designs of the boy's toy that is playing a very important part in our story. The first set of designs is of a wooden plane, before it starts changing according to different events happening in WW II. The second set of designs is of a plane from 1950's, which is much more modern and made out of a different material.

Prop Influence Map

This is an influence map for our plane prop. We have included images of planes that appeared during WW II.

Character Influence: Tin Tin

During our third tutorial with Alan it was pointed out that our character design of the young boy looked a bit like the cartoon Tin Tin. Alan said this wasn't a bad thing at all because it was beginning to lean towards the era we are trying to portray during our animation so I have put together an influence map of Tin Tin to refer back to and help us refine our character :)



Character design: sketches

Here are one of the first sketches for character design. We decided that it should look closest to the first sketch from the top. However it still will be developed.