Cinematic Production - Concept Development 05

Week 5 - Day 2

I actually made a clay maquette with Tea last week on Friday but I completely forgot to blog about it that day and I forgot to blog about it in the weekend and I forgot to blog about it yesterday because filming...But! Here it is:

This is the little spirit creature!!! Isn't it cute and fluffy? I actually had a lot of difficulty with the fluff around the neck but Keat helpfully jumped in and gave me a hand with it and it looks SO MUCH BETTER! I mean, it's not exactly like the model sheet but it's looking gooooood~ So yes, much happy!

We did a lot of filming on Monday. I think we managed to get about...80 or so shots done with a lot of repeats interspersed here and there. We changed cameras midway and had to reshoot everything but the quality in the camera we borrowed from the school is actually better (sorry, Hamish) and we figured we might as well stick to the one camera rather than have shots from two different cameras of two slightly different qualities. Meh. I have no clue how cameras work except for the one that's included on my phone. Anyway, with filming mostly out of the way, I'm planning on using this week to get ahead of the schedule which means...rough animations. I'll probably do some movement sketches and see which one works best. Until we've got a background all figured out, I'm not gonna bother with different angles because it might not mesh all that well and end up being a bit too jarring because, whoa...

Anyway, that's all folks! See y'all next time.

Cinematic Production - Concept Development 04

Week 4 - Day ??? (I made a mistake and accidentally overwote the 4th concept development with the 5th one, WHICH SUCKS because my thought processes for that particular day IS GONE! I am super tired...)

So, all I can really remember is that I went through some color concepts which are...here...

And then all I remember from the meeting was that my spirit creatures look too much like pokemon and then Tea's adaptation of Adrian's spirit creature looked much better so I changed mine to fit which you can see...here...

Man, this week has been so tiring and it's only Tuesday. Today is not a good day. I lost Cinematic Production - Concept Development 04 because I was stupid and absentminded and overwrote it as Cinematic Production - Concept Development 05 which is not cool. EVERYTHING IS GONE AND NO AMOUNT OF CTRL+Z IS ENOUGH TO RECOVER ANY OF IT!!

I despair. I'd like to go home and play Guildwars now, but I must write my game blog...

Cinematic Production - Concept Development 03

Week 4 - Day 1 (Back to the daily grind...)

I've drawn up some model sheets for my spirit creature concepts but as I was drawing them I noticed that I like certain parts more than others, like the horns, or the tail or the body shape. I drew the model sheets for two of my favorites and a different one than what I stated in the previous post because you know people change their minds all the time.

Anyway, here they are!

I am not a huge fan of the first model sheet because not only are the horns ridiculous, the body shape is a bit too...generic to me? I mean, it doesn't SCREAM cute, but I'm glad I gave it a try anyway because it was either this or the one that looked like the snake and the snake was a bit too malicious to me in terms of symbolism.

I really like the tail and the horns of the second spirit creature and the body shape is a bit too similar to the first one but slimmer? Meh...In any case, the model sheet is a lot easier to draw but just not quite what I'm looking for.

But if you look at the third model sheet, OH SO CUTEEE, THE PUDGY BODY, THE FLUFFY NECK, THAT FACE. XD Such derp~ I like it a lot. I'm just worried how difficult it'll be to animate and how consistent it'll be. I mean, SO MUCH FLUFF!! But with great cuteness, comes great animation troubles...

I'm going to mix and match a bit of everything I like about the spirit creatures I've got so far and hope I'll get a fix on something I like by the end of Tuesday because I really want to get the rest of the concepts done by the end of the week.

ONWARDS!!

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UPDATE!! ON THE SAME DAY!! SDKJHFJSDHFKSDF

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OKAY! So, same body shape but with different tufts of fur, different tails and horn shapes and size. I am really like the look of the third one! Such a clown! I'm not a big fan of the horns or the tuft of fur in the 2nd one, though, nor in the 4th one. It doesn't look good, so I'm still stuck between the original drawing and the 3rd exploration concept. I'm going to try to make a model sheet out of that one first and see how it goes from there. Maybe I can replace the weird collar for the fur instead, but smaller? I have no idea; it's all still very up in the air at this point.

(Do you like their little faces? Because I do...)

Awhh, so cuteee~ But I think I might go back to the original design anyway. XD

Character Model Sheet 02

 Week 2 - Day 4 (This has been a good week.)

So, I worked a little bit more on the facial structure of Emelyn on Keat's advice and she does look a bit better. Sam and Oscar both agree that she looks nicer with an actual forehead and with the contour of her skull as well. So, woohoo!!

Facial Structure!!

Next is...putting together some color concepts for Emelyn and the cake! I'm going to through out a few combinations and HOPE SOMETHING EVENTUALLY WORKS!

Colors

I'm not too sure about the silk and the cashmere, but that's maybe because I suck at photoshop and I don't know how to manipulate photos and colors on top of drawings. You can hardly see the texture of the clothing on her, but ehhh...it might show up a lot better on the 3D program but I'm just gonna keep this here for referencing and come back to it later on once we actually start on using Maya properly.

I will definitely keep the icing on the cake as the same color as the clothes on Emelyn, though, so that's one less thing to fuss about which is nice. As for the texture...well...

Cake Textures

I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter!! DFGJKSDFGJKHD The marbling effect looks nice. Tea helped me with how to liquefy the diamond texture so it fit the contours of the cake which is great because I used that to do the marbling look as well! Unless the colors are a bit more desaturated, it looks a bit too much and might take more from Emelyn in the final 3D animation. As much as I like the look of the textures on the cake, I'm not too sure how well it'll work in the end. I'll keep this here anyway and, who knows? Maybe it'll work a lot better in 3D than trying to figure it out on photoshop.

Anyways, this is it for the week. I am ready for storyboarding! Stay tuned to see how I crash and burn...


P.S - I annoyed Hamish today with the Lava song. It's soooo funny.

P.P.S - He is not amused.

P.P.P.S - I don't care.

CHEERS!!

Character Model Sheet 01

 Week 2 - Day 3

Next on the agenda is...some model sheets! YAY! Here we go on the turn around and a few preliminary tries of expressions and poses. I included the rough line-work of the cake just so we'll know how Emelyn sizes up next to it. I don't think it's going too badly? In any case, I'm quite happy with my progress. Double yay!

Model Sheet 01

Model Sheet 02

Model Sheet 03

Ehhhh, the more I draw her, the more she reminds me of Ariel...but moving on from that, we'll work on the cake next. Tiers, trimmings and textures! OH MY!

Ethan likes the expression on Model Sheet 03 of Emelyn looking down (bottom left side corner). She's so pitiful. DX

What makes a cake, a cake?? Is it the shape? Is it the size? Is it the look? Is it ALL OF THIS? But hey, cakes these days can get pretty creative. A cake might not even look like a cake but for our purposes, we're gonna keep this as simple as possible.

As you saw in my previous designs, I'm aiming for a two-tier cake, basically a copy/paste/resize of the same tier piled on top of the other. It'll have to be simple because it's secondary to the character. Here are a couple of variations on the trimmings and icing/fondant designs I'm thinking of trying:

Cake 01

Cake 02

I'm halfway between deciding a pearl or a teardrop shaped design around the cake. The pearl is a nice simple spherical shape but I the teardrop offers a variation of shape and is visually more appealing, personally speaking...

Oscar thinks marbling might be a bit much for the cake, and I kind of agree with this but I'm not aiming for bright colors so maybe a desaturated color palette might work?

As much as I like the look of the flower tip nozzle to be the trimming, I feel like it might take away from the main character, and also because I might not have the time to try this, NOR THE ENERGY. I haven't even started yet and I'm already feeling a little high-strung and a little overwhelmed with the thought of trying this new 3D programming. IT'S GONNA BE SO WHOA.

Oscar mentioned that the flower nozzle might not even be too hard to do since they're basically going to be copies of each other laced around the cake. I might try this, but no promises!

The extra decoration is gonna stay as a simple cylindrical shape (#2) that's thin on the edges, thick in the middle and wrap around the cake. There's going to be two of these per line and I'm going to try and see if rigging it to manipulate the shape around the cake will be doable or not. WE'LL SEE!!

So, that's the cake. Let's move on to the textures on cloth! This is going to be what Emelyn is going to be wearing. I'm not sure whether I'll go with a simple flat color, or an actual pattern. Not tiger skin but I'm not ruling it out. Here's a couple of ideas!

Clothes Textures

I'm not sure which one I'll go for because I really like the faint pattern from the grey colored cashmere but I also like the smoothness coming from the cotton. I'll stick with flat colors, though, because that's one less complication to worry about, unless it's super easy to apply textures to 3D models? But I have no idea...

Tomorrow, I might work on more expressions and poses for Emelyn, and maybe try some more variations of colors and textures for her. Mix and match, why not? If I've got time, I'll throw in the cake together with her.

Cheers~!