Master and Pupil

Moar character designs. I kinda like the way the master is looking so we could be near a final design for him. He has the traditional Chinese old man beard. Maybe long eyebrows too, though I might get rid of that cause it might look distracting. He could also have long earlobes. In Chinese folklore, it is a symbol of longevity.

The boy character can still be developed more. A small detail about his costume I like is that he ties his belt's knot off-centre. It kinda shows his disregard to the rules, kinda like a schoolboy. He can probably mess up his uniform in other ways too like rolling up his trouser sleaves, scruffy hair etc.

The last image is from a book I brought from Annecy. Hopefully it will give you some more ideas of character costumes. Chow!

Layout thumbnails part1

Been thumbnailing the designs for the layouts. Ive filtered out the ones I dont like so the ones youre looking at now are possibly the final designs... un;ess I change them. Other parts to follow once I finish them.

Linequality

I like the lines on this piece from the Okami artbook. If we can replicate this line quality thatll be greaaat! Ive spoke to Parr before about brush clean up and he said the animation could flicker cause its hard to keep the continuity in brush lines. Best way to decide is to try it and see what we get. If the ink stuff doesnt work, Im sure a combination of thick and thin pencils can mimic the varietion (ive got a 0.3mm and a 0.9mm mechanical pencil that works well together in this way).

More videos

Back around pitching time I found this video of a pilot called Kung Fu Love from Studio 4c. I like some of the animation for the fighting. Theres an interesting use of cg particle effects for the snowflakes. Maybe something to look at for the cherry blossom petals?



Heres a video from the game Heavenly Sword. The leaf looks good on this. Got a kind of AfterEffects look to it.


Heres a section from the film God of Cookery. Its from Stephen Chow, the guy from Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. His comedy style and general quirkiness is something that inspired me. I based the boy's personality on his. Anyway in this video I wanted you to have a look at one part that starts from 2:08 and ends at 3:42. Its a scene that I think describes the boy's personality well.


I remembered an advert from Lynx I saw ages ago that had a similar subject matter to our film.


A while back I saw this video that gave me ideas. I wanted the relationship between the characters to be similar to the one we can see in this video. Something playful rather than aggressive. And yes, I took the part in 2:14 but put a kung fu tist to it. The girl's personality could be close to the girl in this video. Something graceful and flirty. But shes also strong.

Motion bluuuuuuuur

Heres some images on the idea of the dispersing shapes idea. I dont think we should use it all the time, but there are some big actions where this technique could be incorperated.

Poseable striking action garrr!!!

Yo, here's what I mean about the dispersing of the line when the characters would strike. I just remembered about street fighter 4 trailer which has a similar effect although te line on those guys is a bit less stable than I would think ours could look. Here's a drawing I wipped up, excuse the bad quality, it as just to present the idea :).














and here' the trailer to street fighter 4 on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYGbliUZYa8

Inspirational paintings

Here are some paintings I found on-line, hope they can be inspirational to you guys. I know the guy on the horse in the ink pic is a Japanese samurai, but the ink style is interesting.