lauan503weekly- 5th week

Week Five 

Figure 1

Once I was happy with the design of my trees,  I moved onto my first background. In Figure one, under the title 'first design', this is the first background that will be seen in the first scene of the animation. Once I sat down with my group to discuss my first design I wrote down the strengths and the weaknesses of the design:

• This woodland area seemed almost empty. In a realistic woodland area there would have been more trees at the front near the pond but also behind the trees in front. 
• The colour scheme was plain and the colours did not stand out. The trees against the almost disappeared into the main background colour because the colour of the leaves were too similar. We decided as a group that we wanted the area to feel 'warm' as the story was a 'love story'. 
• I went back to adjust and add a different colour to the trees. I did this by collecting some references images of a autumn woodland area so I could get the colour scheme to fit the style. 
• The rocks and water would be kept the same. 

After changing the background from the feedback I got, the final design looked like the right-hand side of figure one:  

• After adding warm colours to the trees such as, red, orange, and yellow. I filled the empty spaces with more trees making the woodland area seem more like a forest. I did this by making the trees different sizes and making some trees appear further away than others. 
• The change of the colour scheme was effective as the trees now stood out from the background instead of disappearing. Using the concept colour boards I managed to find a colour scheme to fit out style and the mood of the animation. The colour used will effect the mood of the audience as I researched some colour theory. The colour red is normally related to the feeling of love and warmth. 
• The leaves that have been added at the edge of the pond look more realistic as the size of each leaf is placed on the bank and some hanging over. 

lauan503weekly- 4th Week

Week Four 

First Design 

Final Design 

Rory was in charge of completing the final designs for the sloth and bear while Cameron did the final design for the swan. In between all the character design Cameron was working on the animatic from the final storyboard. I had been set the task to start creating the backgrounds. After having a group discussion, I followed the layout of the backgrounds from the storyboard panels and listen to the advice from my group to make sure the designs fit the style of the characters. To make the backgrounds work with the characters I started to thinking about what style would work well with the characters.

Using 'Procreate' on my iPad, I started by simply designing the trees that would be in the backgrounds of the woodland area. By creating the design of the trees first I was able to change the design quickly and effectively. If I created a background before designing the little details beforehand there was a chance that the style may have not fit the style of the characters. This would result in,  re-doing the background from scratch. By designing a simple part of the background this helped me to stick to the style of the characters making it look aesthetically appealing to the audience.

• In the first design the trees are in 'blocked colours'. This gave the trees no life and made the style compared to the characters look very bland as the characters are block coloured. I wanted the audience not only focus on the animation of the characters but for the background to have enough appeal for the audience to notice the detail and catch their attention as well. The background is an important part of setting a scene when making the characters more relatable  and is normally the first thing the audience views before the action starts. 
• I decided to keep the shape of the tree in the second and final design but added more texture. By adding the shapes and different colours and creating the texture of leaves instead of just block colour, this gave the background more depth. 

lauan503weekly- 3rd Week

Week Three 

While Cameron finished the design of the storyboard, the rest of the group started on the first rough sketches of the characters. After the rough sketches were complete, we brought the ideas into a  group discussion and discussed what style we wanted the characters to be. After the designs fitted the style of how we wanted it to look visually, Rory could start designing the final art-board for the characters. For the bear, the stye was going to be simple so when it came to animating there wouldn't be as many expressions to take into consideration. The bear is meant to look innocent and not as smart as the sloth is meant to appear. This was our final rough design: 

Designed by Jessica Carter

  

Moving onto the appearance of the sloth; we did some rough sketches similar to what we did for the bear. Noticing that the sloth would be the character expressing the most emotions from happy to shocked. We wanted to add more detail into the sloth's design as the sloth has more of a presence in the animation than the bear. This is the final rough design of the sloth: 

Designed by Rory Gardner

The last character to design was the swan.  The swan is only seen a few times throughout the animation however, because she is viewed as the bears 'love interest' she had to appear beautiful and elegant to the audience. This is the final rough design of the swan: 

Designed by Cameron Cook

lauan503weekly- 2nd week

Second Week 

Before the group thought about the script and storyboard for the story, we discussed who was going to be the director. We all decided on Cameron, as he was the most organised person in the group and would be able to set deadlines.

We discussed the storyline and Cameron set a deadline from Thursday (date) to Wednesday (date) to complete a rough storyboard; we decided that we would all do a storyboard each. So in the end we would have three different storyboards we could pull some ideas from and put all the ideas together to make a final storyboard that Cameron would design. This gave all us of us a chance to have an input in how the story would be told visually.

Once all the storyboards were complete we put the ideas we thought fit the storyline the most effectively, into one final storyboard. We then handed it over to Cameron to design the final storyboard that we would be using for the animatic.  While the storyboard was being completed, me and Rory started the basics designs for the characters.

lauan503weekly- 1st week

The Dark Ending 

In our first lesson of character and narrative, we got assigned a group of three for this project. After the groups were fairly picked,  we each got given dices with images on them to provide us with an idea to base our story on. After we all come up with a storyline, we individually presented our idea. One out of the three ideas would be voted and thats the storyline the group would be focusing on for their animation. The dices I got were:

On the first dice there was a grim reaper figure sailing in a boat, my thought lead straight to death. The second dice had what looked like either a greek symbol or a harp which reminded me of harmony. Lastly, on the third dice was a sailing ship and this made me decide that my story was going to be based of the origins of the sea.


This was my finished story:

• One of the main superstations of the sea was based around women being aboard a working ship was known to cause back luck and even an result in death. My story is based on a woman that decides to board a working ship and throughout the fishing season they run into trouble. At the end of the reason all the men exit the ship and the woman is caught in a magical storm that destroys the ship; resulting in her becoming protecter of the sea. 

The story that ended up getting picked was about: 

• A bear is caught staring at a beautiful swan by a sloth sleeping in the trees. The sloth realises that the bear is in love with the swan and wants to help the bear get the girl. After doing a makeover on the bear the sloth sends the bear on its way while watching in the distance. However, when the bear returns he is holding the swan in his mouth. The swan was the prey and not the love interest! 

As a group we made the decision to change the ending. The original ending was based on the idea that the swan would realise that the bear was the school bully when she was the ugly duckling. However, we came to the conclusion that this ending was not entertaining enough and didn’t pack much of a surprise. We agreed to an new ending as a group and have now started plan further with this new idea.