Over the Summer and start of 3rd Year

Summer

Over summer I began developing my idea for a final project.

I decided to go with my idea ‘Richards and Dean’. This idea was the one I came up with during the first pitch bible project in year two. I knew I had to do some development work over the summer to get ready for the final year. The style was inspired by woodcut and I thought the characters would be very hard to animate like that.

Richards and Dean was originally an idea for a series I created in the pitch bible projects. For this project I am pitching it as a short mini episode.

It is a thriller, mystery loosely based on the film noir genre.

The target audience would be more aimed at teenagers range from 12 and above.

I began researching different styles.  

I've always liked Native American art and I thought about maybe being inspired by that style. By having the characters with very bold outlines and patterns.

 







 I tried a quick and simple drawing of the two in a similar style.

I liked the idea of keeping the black and white film noir style but I tried experimenting with colour.

I then had the idea to have the characters in colour and the backgrounds in black and white. I started re-designing the colours for the characters. I did some rough drawings (in my own style – not the finalised style) to test out colour schemes. 

I began looking at different animals too. I still wanted it to be a fox and a dog but I thought I could look at different kinds. The common red fox is quite popular in animation so I was wondering if there was a different kind of fox I could use. I looked up Gray fox, Swift fox, Silver fox and Marble fox. I did a few colour tests and did a research collage. I looked up some different types of dogs for Richards. I wanted to change his character from a Labrador. I wanted to have a dog that was close to a fox in size and a slightly different shape. I still needed the dog to have quite a different body shape to the fox so they were distinctly different. Floppy ears and a short tail worked quite well. The dogs I particularly liked the look of were the Beagle, Weirmaraner and a Brittany.  

The size of the beagle worked quite well as it is very close to the size of a fox. 

I liked the simple colours of the weimaraner and the look of the dog. 

The Brittany had a nice pattern on it but I really liked the ear shape and face shape.

I ended up doing a simple design in which I took qualities from all these dogs and mixed them together.

It also ended up that Dean look best as a red fox or a silver one (if the characters where in black and white).

I was then inspired by sin city as I remembered the style it had. How it was mostly black and white but there were some bright vivid colours that showed through. I really liked this art style of the movie and thought it looked cool. I thought I could possibly do something similar with my idea and have a few things in colour while the rest in black and white. Richards bright blue eyes was something I thought would be good in colour. I looked at Dean and I wasn’t sure if all his fur should be red which would make him really stand out or if just his eyes could be. I also thought blood would be good to have in colour as I remember from my old drawings I was always a bit stuck on what shade in black and white the blood should be. In sin city the only things in colour were primary or vivid colours while all the rest was black and white. 

I began doing some character practise sketches after doing some research into design. I had a look at my old style. I liked the shape of the characters but I did think they were a bit too realistic looking and that this time I should try and make them slightly more cartoony. I did some more design and style research.

 

 

 

 

Last time I looked at animals of farthing wood so I had a re-look at that style

I then did some early designs.

After the initial design ideas I played around with the colour. I found some black and white wood cut images online and placed my characters in the scene and I messed around with the colours to see what looked good. I also painted some blood in the scene in colour.

I liked the colour on the fox and thought it made him stand out against the background. The only concern I had was that he pulled a lot of attention in because Richards was just grey. But I kept it like that as I liked his design. I realised I needed to work on some background designs to see what the characters would look like in the style I ended up with.

First I did some further character development. I had feedback suggesting Richards should have a pattern on him instead of being all one colour because Dean is two colours it would fit better. I did a number of pattern tests but this was the final result.

I did some research into backgrounds. I wanted to go black and white and simple. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to have the woodcut style in the backgrounds as they took a long time to draw.  

 

 

 

I quite liked the simplicity of the last image.I did some drawings and practised some styles. I wasn’t too sure if the styles were too simple and I really wanted someone to help me with the style. I emailed my tutor and she sent me some inspiration images but in the woodcut style again. I decided to give the style a go again.   
 

 

 

I really liked these woodcut backgrounds and I experimented with doing something similar. If my idea was chosen to animate I would ask for lots of background artist to work on these backgrounds.

 

 

 Test

 My wow first image design

 Second done in wood cut style.

I began re-developing a story idea for a mini short teaser episode as I was working. I did a few draft scripts and I brain stormed many ideas but eventually my final idea was this:

The story in brief will begin with the pair at a crime scene. Richards is studying the body and Dean has become very impatient as they have been out for hours. He feels like he isn’t really needed. When Richards figures out the killer is a cat Dean rushes off to find the killer himself despite Richards saying to wait. As he leaves a shady figure appears and Richards doesn’t notice. As Dean is going down an alley way he sees a shape in the clouds that resemble an angry cat. This makes him realise he shouldn’t leave Richards alone while there is a dangerous killer on the loose. He decides to go back where he sees Richards struggling with the assailant. Dean races over and takes down the antagonist he helps Richards up. Dean recognizes Richards does need him.

I did the turn arounds for the characters and developed them further. I used the old turn arounds for Richards and drew over them with his new body shape.

I did the cat villain drawing and early concepts. Below is the final design.

 

I finalised some wow images and added my characters to some of the backgrounds I had finished and I was quite pleased with how they turned out. These were the final peices I created for the practise pitches and the final thing I did over the summer.

 

Week One

The first week back we had to get ready for our pitches on wednesday. We also had some introduction lessons. I made sure all my designs where ready and put together a presentation power point. I then wrote down what I was going to say next to each slide. I realised I needed another wow image so I thought I'd do some work on one.

 I also began to get worried because I was pitching a series. I started wondering if they would ask questions about the episodes and what happens in the series. I hadn't really thought about this much since the time I worked on this project for the first time last year. I thought I should look over the old episode guide I had written and I spent that evening coming up with new ideas, re-writing and changing some episodes.I hoped this would help me feel more prepared.


After the practise pitch I had some feedback on making my character more extreme and different from each other. I also needed to explain the story more for the real pitch. I then had a suggestion from some class mates that because Dean was so red it made him look more important than Richards since he blended into the backgrounds. I decided to try and play around with his colour again and see if I could make him stand out more.

 

I tried a few but I ended up liking the Beagle inspired colours with was originally one of the dogs that Richards design was inspired from.

Finalised designs and artwork for pitches.

 

I developed the characters personality further for the pitches as well.

The dog is Richards he is very intelligent and is the town detective. His owner was a detective and Richards learnt skills from him. 

The Fox is Dean he is Richards’s detective partner. He doesn’t have the skill set Richards has when it comes to studying a crime scene but he helps Richards keep focused and out of trouble.

The two tend to collide a lot on how to go about solving the case. However when working well together they can become unstoppable.

Richards is very slow but he gets the job done. He is confident in his detective skills and sometimes he can come across as arrogant which can rub Dean up the wrong way. A lot of animals think Richards is a bit strange as he seems to know a lot about the human world.

All he wants is to catch the killer and solve the case that is his soul focus. He keeps his emotions in check and tends to think logically about every situation.  

Dean on the other hand is impatient and opinionated. He is sensitive to criticism.

He can be clumsy and tends to rush into situations without thinking. He is very caring to his friends and loyal. Dean can become distracted when he should be helping Richards. He is particularly distracted when he sees female foxes in town. 

Dean wants justice and he wants it fast and Richards wants to make sure the job is done correctly no matter how long it takes.   

Friday
We had the real pitches in the Poly. I asked to go 4th so I could get it over with so I wouldnt feel so nervous. When I went up however I felt prepared and thought I delivered a good and clear pitch and answers questions well. I enjoyed everyones pitches and thought everyone did a really good job. I particually liked Jack and Leonie's ideas, I also laughed a lot at Jame's idea and thought his would be fun to animate on. We wouldn't find out who's ideas would be chosen until next week.