Story Change

After some deep thinking and reconsideration, we now have a new ending for the animation which shall hopefully work. Pandy is now going to be a real life bear, i feel this is a little too much like Toy Story but we feel the animation may not work as well if he is not a real life character. The difference between the two though is that Pandy shall stay real life so Summer and Pandy have a real relationship instead of Summer just having him as a cuddly toy.
The new animatic is currently in working progress and i shall try and post them both up so that you can see the difference between the two. As that is being done i am now modeling the characters. I had started this process for my other unit for Dan Dali, but now it is time to make them properly. Posts shall be put up to see how things are going. Karl is carrying on with prop modeling as it seems we need more props than what we thought.

Formative

Well the Christmas holidays are here which is great but i have lots of work to get on with. The formative was a disaster. Our teacher Mike did not seem to like many things about our project. Here is a list of the things he said.
He thought our animation was very confusing, it had no clear message and that it would only confuse the audience, so we need to come up with a new ending. He also thought that the character bios were far to brief, they didn't really explain who they are as a person and what they mean to one another. Mike kept getting confused about weather Pandy was a real life person or just a teddy bear. He did not really like the style of Summer and said that i need to do some new designs to her. The one thing he did like was the concept art that me and Ryan had created, but said it was not developed enough.

So just from them things alone, it felt like the whole project had to be done all over again. Which was something we just do not have the time to do. I understand his concern about Pandy as even we were pondering if he should be alive or not. Going backwards is not something we can afford to do as we need to start modeling during the Christmas holidays but it seems that is going to be held off at this moment in time. So the next stage now is to go back and see how we can change the ending of the story as it seems that part is a little confusing, this needs to be changed as soon as possible so that everyone knows what is going on, and then from there we can do our individual things.

Expressions

Here i have draw the main character expressions that will be used for the animation. Drawing the face expressions will help me to create them in 3D, this is also a great way to know how your character will look. This will also be helpful to the rigger as they will need to make blendshapes for the face.

Character Bios

Getting ready for the formative which is coming up soon, i have been creating some character bios, so that the audience can get a little insight into who they are. I have only done a rough summery at this stage as i feel i do not need to go into to much detail about them as the animation is so short. We need to concentrate on the actual animation itself not all the paperwork behind it.


The poses i choose for Summer and Pandy were to show what they are like. One of summers main things is to draw, she loves nothing more than to draw everyday, and in the tree house there shall be many of her art pieces pined up against the tree house. As for Pandy he is a little clumsy at the best of times, and thought him falling over would be a nice pose to show that.

Complete Storyboard

Here is the completed storyboard that Ryan made, these are the key screen shoots and the kind of camera angles we are thinking of using. We were all wondering what would be a good way to finish the animation as it finishes kind of suddenly. Ryan thought of an idea of when the torch hits the ground and rolls, that could be a good time to have the animation title come up and then have the credits roll. With Karls help, he came up with using childs blocks to spell out 'Summers Tree House' which i thought was a great idea and the perfect way of keeping everything consistent.

The next thing now is for Ryan to make an animatic to try and pace the timing of each shoot. We also want this to show for our formative presentation that we have in a weeks time.
With the formative coming up i need to start creating facial expressions which will be key to the animation as well as a little bio for each character.
There is lots of work to be done in a short period of time.

Summer

Whilst playing around with Summers colour scheme a little more i now have a new final design. Most of the colours before have still been used but they are just in a pastel form. The main elements i have changed are her hair and t-shirt. I have included yellow mainly to represent her name Summer. Yellow is very popular and bright when it is summer time, it makes people think of happiness and joy. I think this suits Summer a lot more than how she looked before and she will stand out greatly when it comes to the dark environment. Her eyes are now blue as they are near oppersite to the colour wheel of yellow (blonde) hair which makes her eyes stand out. Her facial animation is going to be very important to the animation and will want to show messages even through her eye colour.


Here i have the original colour scheme and have played around with the type of baby colours i think would work. I now see that using pastel colours helps to make summer look young where as the stronger bold colours make her look a little more grown-up. Her eye colour has changed although you may not be able to see this all that well.

Pandy

Here is the new and improved Pandy. He now looks a lot more like an actual teddy bear but i still tried to keep a little attraction of a panda. Compared to how he was before he has changed in pretty much every way possible. He is now taller and thinner, and i got rid of the flower on top of his head as i felt it had no real purpose to the storyline.

I done a colour study test to see how he changed through colour. I also wanted to do this as a test for the colour scheme of the animation. As the animation is now of a dark colour scheme i did not want him to blend to much with the background, although he is going to be a dark silhouette, but this will be shown through the lighting of the weather. Cream and browns worked best on Pandy as he reflects with the colour scheme of Summer, bright, bold and realistic.
Brown is also a common for a teddy bear which is another thing which makes him a little more realistic but in a stylized way.

Designing

Our project is slowly coming together. Ryan is making good progress with the storyboard and shall have it finished any day. Karl is already starting to work on Maya with some experimental tests of modeling. I have been making some large changes to Pandy as i was not happy on how he looked. With many drawings, i have come up with a design that the other team others are happy with.

Here is a mood board which shows my inspirations for Pandy. The bottom right image has been a great help as he looks very friendly from the circular shapes used. The bon bon on top of his head helped me with the first designs but have now moved forward since then.



Above are some rough images of how i am thinking of having Pandy. As you can see he has changed drastically to portray him looking more like an actual teddy bear instead of a panda, even though his name is going to remain the same. I am still going to have the circles around his eyes to show that there are still elements of him looking like a panda. I know need to try and make any finishing touches to him and create a new model sheet.

I am unsure if Summer needs any further changes at the moment as i feel she looks complete and can see her working with the animation. I think i may still need to do some more colour studies and see how things go from there.