The Plan...

OK, we have officially started production! Lets talk about our schedule. Looks like Im handling the layout stuff at the moment. Still need to check everything with the tutors to make sure there is no problems (last time I checked our storyboard with Parr he only pointed out little bits to change and almost nothing to change from the story so I hope the changes we made covers those issues). Otherwise, I can do nothing but go ahead and do the layouts. And for my lovely animators we've been discussing our assualt and this is what we come up with...
2 weeks - Finish the character designs
2 weeks - Produce Model Sheets
2 weeks - Learn to draw the characters (and do animation tests)

Stages of animation:
Rough -> Clean Up -> Trace

Scene Distribution:
We talked about this a bit and I think what we will do is hand out the scenes as you finish them. But if you have a preference to a particular scene, let me know your top 3 choices and we'll see what happens :)

Title Shot

Upper section complete. Unfortunately I couldnt find the P-man today and we're kinda still in the induction period so it doesnt look like we will be able to find him for a tutorial in the next few days. But fingers crossed anyway. Our editor is on the animatic case. So fingers crossed again that we could get that timed out spot on which would help the animation loads!
Anyway, Ive also included a lil title to the opening scene. I had a few ideas for the title shot. It could pop up at the start, middle or end. This shows how it'll look if its at the start. It'll fade in and fade out as the camera pans down (following a cherry blossom petal falling). There might be some Chinese texts to go with the English tittle too.
The version where the title appears in the middle is a bit iffy. Prob not gonna use it but it would have appeared between the scenes where the master hits the boy and throws him out. But it would probably slow the pace of the film own.
Or it could appear at the end like I showed on the original animatic from the pitch when the door slams shut and all goes black, the text will pop out.
Oh, and what do people think of the name of the film so far anyway? Its not set in stone so if we can come up with something better then that would be a plus. But I think the title we have so far is decent. Perhaps we can have a slogan too?

The Beginning Of It All!

Its the early hours of the official starting day for the grad film productions and what a way to celebrate with the painting of the first shot being completed! Theres still the upper section of the pan to be completed but here is the 'juicy' part of it. Still need to talk with the tutors about our plan so lets hope we get the all-clear in a couple of hours time. Right Im off to bed.

Girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllll

I gave the girl another go. Kept it really simple this time. I tried to match TJ's design style he used on the boy character. She's not too difficult to draw, but I'll develop a more solid and systematic method for drawing her face if we go with this idea.

Our New Home!

Doesnt it feel like you just moved in to a new lovely penthouse? This is where we will be making magic for a year. We only have the three tables on the left side. The Risk team is right behind us there... We could nick it off em ;)
We also have a lovely view out the window. I bet we could even climb out there and onto that lil roof and put a few lightboxes there and a couple of deck chairs!
Anddddddddd... we get a lovely view of the first years too!
O and and and... New whealy chairs! No more walking!
OK, now imagine that place alive with animation paper spilling everywhere and pencil sharpenings flooding the place! Lets get decorating!

EDIT: A bit off topic, but we may be able to get a model maker to help us make models of the characters to help us out with visualizing the characters in 3d. But we'll probably need the model sheets to start that. And I also have quite a complex female manikin that I'll bring in to help with posing the girl character.

Productionish Stillish

Heres an idea of what teh production still might look like. This is mainly a mock up to show how the layout and characters could fit together. I used the blur effect I explained to TJ to creat a kind of depth of field look. Enjoy!

ReDrawn the Opening Layout

Yeah, I couldnt help myself and I went and redrew the first layout. I need to go out sometime :P

Layout linework.... Again!

From Scene 4.

Opening Linework

Heres part of the linework for the opening scene. Its still going to have the pan downwards but I'll add the tree bits later. I believe TJ and Zen are going to have a crack at the characters too. Moarrrrrr 2 comeee!
Oh yeah, the new firsts years have arrived! Exciting times no?

Bed of Roses

Another layout painted. Again, one of the simpler ones just to knock the numbers down a bit :P This one comes after the two heroes land in the embraced position and the camera cuts to the girl's face. So the camera is a down shot looking over the boy's shoulders. The cherry blossom petals will probably be still raining down softly too. It might be a nice touch if we see some land and sit on the ground.

Oh yeah, remind me to save the steps for future paintings. I'd like to show you how I approach some of these stoof! It might be erm... educational!

Some More Character Doodlings

Dont forget about the other characters in the background like the butcher and the other students training.
OMG we are getting closer to the beginning of it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Taa Daaaaa!

I came up with an idea recently. In the new storyboard, when the two are fighting on top of the rooftop and we cut to the shot of the boy throwing ze punch... he blocks and parries an attack first. The background was going to be the sky but I thought it might be cool if when the boy blocks the initial attack the background switches to this red glow here.

The Sky is the Limit!

Another layout done, though a rather simple one. This is when the boy and the girl land together in that embraced position and the camera is just looking up to the boy before we hear the Master enter.

Repaint!

Well, I said I may rework it but I didnt think it would be this quickly. Something really bugged me about the painting and after a bit of brainstorming I decided on changing a few things. Actually, I think I might rework this again because I forgot to try another idea I had on it.
Lemme know which version u prefer.

First Complete Background

Done for now. If I have time later in the year I may revisit this.

Ideas for Character Style

I have some interesting ideas that Ive seen being done and thought about. Matt, who I now live with (oh shit!), and a few other animators are working on an animated commercial this summer and Ive just been shown some interesting techniques they are using for the colouring of the animated linework. What I was shown was a simple character design being painted with a new feature on Photoshop CS3. So it was an animation that has a painted quality look to them. Matt was pretty damn excited by this and I was too! Because of the simplicity of the character design he was able to paint them quite quickly. Since our character design is a little bit more complex I thought we could use ToonBoom to lay down the basic colours and importing them into Photoshop CS3 to add in highlights and textures.
This could be a bit of a lengthy process but we could also save time as we probably wont need to draw the shadow layers on. You can see above a little test I just did. If it works out like I think it could, that is how the animation could look.
Anddddddddd... heres a sneak peak of what how the layout is looking...

One Down.... Another 40 to go!

Yup, finished my first layout for the film. Thought I'd warm up with a simpler one. This one is from the third scene where we first see the boy. This one was done under a day, but there are some more complicated shots...

Still To Do...

Thought I might update you all on where we are currently up to.

Character Design - Need to finish boy design, a bit more work on the girl's head.

Model Sheets - Once the character design stage is near complete, we can get this underway. Ive heard the more model sheets we produce, the better.

Storyboard - Pretty much complete (until Parr destroys it so we'll need a check up on that) There are rooms for the animation to break away and add some more flashy movements.

Animatic - So far we are using the old one. There is only a few chances in the storyboard so I think this is still a decent referance for timing. Our editor was going to have a go at timing the animatic himself but we can hardly keep contact cause he's extremely busy atm.

Music - I found a few musicians on the internet that are available for collaboration but I havent made any approach yet. I was thinking of keeping our options open cause there may be someone we could use from the BU. But perhaps we should act fast instead? Will ask Parr for his thoughts.

Colourkeys - Complete. May fiddle around with it more but no big thing.

Character Colours - Got a strong idea of where they are heading. Cant really get this done without the character's final design.

Layouts - With the colourkeys kinda done and the thumbnailing/designing pretty much done too. This stage can start soon. The perspective lines are already available, so when you're ready, you can animate.

Crewpack - Im getting on to this. A few pages are written up, but we'll need the model sheets done too to fit them in.

Things to think about (we'll probably decide this when we're all back):
Clean-up (TJ mas some interesting points about this)
Referance (would it be helpful to film some live action?)
How to do the petals (2d or 3d)
When are we going to Smash some Bros?!?!?!

Where the Characters Stand

Heres something to give you all an idea of where the placements of the characters are. Ive also hinted at a few background characters too. Though most of them wont be animated (so dont worry about that) theyre only in shot for a small number of time. Also I put in some perspective lines to help with the animation. Its probably hard to see but when we start animating, I'll print them out without the colours or linework ;)
O btw, you may notice some panels missing. That is because they are reusing a layout previously illustrated.

New Colour Keys Part2

Heres the final parts to the colour keys. Actually, they're not all finished. I have a tendancy to go in and rework parts of it so bits n pieces will possibly change. The previous post on colourkeys has been reworked but I wont bother posting those (dont wanna flood this place withthe same shit :D)

Wheres TJ?

Well, Ive been back in Bournemouth for a few days now and I have found our missing TJ! Hes got no internet for a while, he'll have it back when his new housemates: Hozen and Jed gets back. Anyway, he showed me his work and we spoke a bit about our film. Hes done a lot of studies (gestural drawings) from kung fu films and claimed it was a very useful exercise and he feels more confident tackling this animation after that. So I guess it would be encouraged that we all go out and do a few of these ourselves if TJ found it that helpful himself. He also came up with a few good ideas for the movements of certain scenes and suggested possible camera shakes - he saw a film that used this technique very well during one of their action scene.

Oh, and his Nicktoon project looks pretty cool!!!!!!!!!!! We can all have a lil screening of it when we're all together again.

Oh! And and and...... We got our spaces picked! It was hand picked by the tutors. But anyway, we got half the booth that Seiji's Bird Team occupied last year. We're sharing it with Sara's Risk Team. So we get 3 seat n lightboxes. We get the seats facing the Maya room. Soooooo... Im afraid we might have to take turns floating around.

Master Design Guide

We're more closer to finalizing this guy than anyone else I reckon. Keith has done some really good designs for the costumes. But maybe we can make the face a bit more angular so he would look more elderly with his cheak bones jutting out. Also I prefer the moustache and the beard to be quite close together so that they are almost one set of hair! Other than that, this design is getting close. But the boy still need a lot of work I realise...

Girl Design Guide

OK, Ive went through the artwork we've all been building up and Ive selected a few to point out what I like from each. So we can now just mash these together and we could be on to a final design. Im pretty happy about the colours. The issue about the eyes... I do like the drawing without the bottom drawn in but if we paint the whites in without them on Toonboom it could result in flickery whites in the eyes. But I think we may have a solution. Hozen drew his bottom lines in but didnt finish them off, this will indicate an imaginary or a faint line that could prove very useful.
I like the hair on Hozen's piece, but maybe its a bit too complicated to draw over a lot of frames so we could simplify it a little bit. I like the simplicity of the hair style in Keiths picture. The length of the hair is good. So combine the top of Hozen's hair with the bottom of Keith's and we're close.
For the costume, I like the one I drew on the left. I stole the skirt design from Keith. And I also prefer the sleaves Keith drew on the right, so we'll need to attach that to the dress on the right.
The countdown begins... Soon we start!

New Colour Keys Part1

Reworking on the colour keys. Next part to follow once theyre done.

Characters

Some more character designs combining ideas from the work that we've got so far. I tried my take on Keith's design for the master's costume, but I still prefer his version:P I quite like the girls costume in this pic, but still got to work on the head along wth everyone else. I really like a design Hozen did of the boy's face but I cant draw it!

Slightly Updated Storyboards

Something I put together for our editor. Though I need some better scans for some of the panels but I need to be back in Bournemouth for that so you'll have to make do with some old panels. There are some new thumbnails for the layouts but I wont bother adding them to the storyboard. The shots are the same. See u all soon...

Oh yeah. Scene number 34 of this version... The actual choreography of this shot is still a bit uncertain. Originally the shot was based on the scene in Kung Fu Love where two people we punching each other through a table. But it'll probably be more appealing if theres some variety in there. So this might be something to think about. I guess when we get together we can do some live action referance filming too. In the meantime, Ive been looking around for some close quarter combats for scene34 and this is the best I can find: