LAUAN503 - Development and Production (weekly blogs 4)

Production - Use the skills that have been developed through workshops and study tasks to develop and produce the your animation through your chosen medium.
My scenes in the final animation.

Characters development, Final character sheets

Adding redder eyes for my rat character I have created this character sheet and refined the character design, making the belly longer and going with the longer legs and straight whiskers, The best-known rat as the black rat. Generally designed as a 'Old World' rats or true rats as inspiration, trying to keep the rat as feral as possible, taking inspiration and reference from these Black Rats and taking the characteristics for a more accurate character design.

(Dan's final Skelly skeleton design image)

(Dan's final Skelly skeleton design image)

As usual, in the development stage, characters are changed form influences and design techniques that are easier to produce in the final animation or are required by the group leader.

Skelly the skeleton turned into our group leaders character to design because we had a debate on how Skelly should be animated, my original skelly designs had the ribcage collective as one solid object, but the group leader wanted the ribs to be floating with a green magic glow. This was reasonable and at the time the animation itself did have a much longer ending scene but I suggested that it would be to much detail to animate.

Now Skelly has a short appearance at the end and proved an effective character design, despite the amount of detail.

Background and props design and production

Each prop was designed with the idea that the Goblin mage/wizard would be an amateur at his profession, so they are drawn to look like they are made really basic with wood.

Many of these props had been featured in the final animation in the background, these were the props from the original 'Prop list' that have been developed and are now used as concept art and reference in the environment background. These are basically for setting the scene and complementing the fantasy theme.

They are designed with enough line drawings at low opacity with mellow beige colouring and cool blues for the magical potions and bottles because of the special effects that will be added in an overlay layer and animated. 

Production

Animatic scene sketch

Sketched animatic with grey scale sketched backgrounds and character silhouettes for basic character placement and showcasing all action and movement, also very basic character interaction with the environment and props, using directional arrows and feature lines to suggest what the character is doing in the scene.

(Dan's animatic group work screenshot reference)

Drafting

Coloured and refined character with grey scale background. 

Using grey scale for background reference, making it easier for the group leader to insert the final refined background. Using the refined grey scale was important so that the animated characters could pass in and out of the shot, behind obstacles and props. This was effectively a template for the character animation.  

Refined 

Finished coloured refined background with coloured refined character animation layer on top.

Enhancing the narrative, the detail in the backgrounds used in the final animation create a feeling of depth and charm. Characters interaction and experiences in this detailed and refined world interest the viewer as each scene is drawn and coloured beautifully.

The refined character animations had been completed with sketchy bolt lines and block colouring, not the most fluent design, but this, as a group, was something that we all designed less and instead coordinated the extra effort into the background design, extra texture, shading and, special effects.

(Dan's final background image)