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:

Mountains

Heres a painting I was inspired to create after seeing some spectacular mountains during my visit to Hong Kong and China. I have also collected quite a few referance photos for the layout stuff too. Looking good. Soon the real game begins...