DGA260 Pre production

James henry ideas

We got a brief to do some designs for james henry. He pitched to us some of his ideas and we then had to go away and come up with some designs. 


I wanted to work on the idea "Rune Paw" which had a lot of animal characters in it. I began making some sketches and tried out a few different styles.

I started thinking about redwall as the idea made me think of it and that kind of style. I then went on to do quite a few drawings for characters and ideas.

I also tried out a few background ideas using a very simple style. 

 Once we had some feedback James suggested going with a very simple style might be the best way to go. Although he liked the disneyish styles he thought for the audience he was pitching for the simpler style would fit better. He suggested a style like Pepper pig but not as simple.

I then did these characters. A few simple ideas and different animals. I also looked the the silloutte version to see if the characters looked different from eachother. I believe most do but prehaps some of the mice need a different body shape to stand out more.

Pre Production Bible

We had to come up with a new idea or expand on our old ideas. We will be pitching ideas next year for 3-5min short films. It would be good to use this oppotunity to develop an idea for that.

I decided to try and come up with a short film idea.


I had an old idea about a magical lake that can detect what others true intentions are. If their heart is good they get magical healing power from the lake and if they have evil in their heart they get the power to destroy. I had characters and plot for this. The characters where going to go on a journey to find this lake. This idea was quite a long one and possibly one for a series or long movie. I then tried to adapt some elements from this idea to a new short film.

I had this character named Azil living in a world of darkness. He wishes for life to come back to his land and to bring the light back into it. I would then have a light character and a dark character.
It was going to be a very visual idea. The light and dark would fight and as they would everything the dark touches dies and everything the light touches comes to life. The plants and trees would be affected by their touch as they battled.

However I ended up changing my idea. I realised I had chosen to do something quite visual. I mainly enjoy script writing and character development so I thought I could do another idea for a series. The first bible I did I really enjoyed and so I thought it would be fun to do another.
I thought about all the series ideas I had delveloped before. I had done lots of fantasy idea, action, adventure and for my last project a detective one. I thought doing a Science fiction idea could be good. Its one of my fav generes and ive never tried to do one.

I did some brain storming and "animals in space" stood out.

I did a lot of moodboards for styles for characters, animals, background styles

I started on some character ideas and did some rough sketches.

I drew out some realistic versons of the animals.

I did body shape sketches

I decided to look at graphic type style. Samurai jack i found was a good example. I liked the way the character didn't have any outlines. I thought I could try this style for my characters.

I started off with the head designs and character ideas.

I got the crew lined up to show their sizes and see how they fit together as a unit.

I got feedback on the characters and it seemed that their body shapes were a bit too similar. They all posessed the "fit" body shape. I saw the problem when I made the characters silloettues. It was mainly between the panther and the wolverine. Decided to fiddle around with the characters bodies. I made the red panda rounder and the Hyena muscular to make sure there would be no confusion there. I then tried to change the wolverine but in the end I decided to change the animal to make him more distinctivly different.

I did a few colour tests for the panther. I liked the idea of her being blue and thought it would really stand out. I tried a more traditional black/grey colour and then tried a lighter colour. If I went with the light colour she would be changed into a lioness. In the end I went with a duller version on the blue so it didnt look too strange.

These are some other animal designs comparing them with the sillouettes to see what bodies stood out. I tried a komodo dragon, bat, otter and skunk. I ended up liking the otter the most. He seemed to fit in with the other four better than the others with his long body shape.

I brainstormed some ideas for ship design and thought it might be a cool idea to base the design on a fish. Maybe other ships in the series could be based off other fish shapes. I wasn't sure how extreeme I wanted this to look though. It would only be loosly based.

 

 Few design ideas

Space digital painting

More concept ideas

I did a lot of research into backgrounds style and particularly liked the style of Elle Michalka. I also looked at some concept backgrounds for samurai jack. I needed to find a style that fit with my character designs. After doing lots of research I made a few moodboards.

I then tried out some styles and made a few concept backgrounds and wow images.

First logline Idea

After the earth is mysteriously destroyed, a strong willed panther and her crew must explore galaxy in search of a new home for their kind.

Final logline

A crew of four animals, led by an aventure loving panther, must search the galaxy for a sustainable planet. They have to work together together against mind control aliens, emotion enhansing fog, space hunters or simply to aviod the captains terrible cooking.