Character Design Challenge - April 2018

I decided to participate with this months character design challenge with the theme space pirate, which is actually the story we had in mind for the major project this year right from the start. Based on the research I did regarding to relative elements, I decided to make a character who is not a human, which end up with a rabbit who use his advantage of speed in the space. The design was made on paper, sketched with pencil first and cleanup with with a illustration brush pen. The colour and background was painted digitally eventually.

As conclusion, what I could do to improve the design is to put extra details onto the character's suit as it feels empty, as it was drawn by brush pen, and the texture/outcome is suitable for small details.

Major project - Animation demo

This is the animation we have so far to put together for the crit.

Major project - Cleanup

Regarding to the biggest challenge during animating and the feedback we got from peers, what we should consider is finding a way of keeping the consistency of the animation. The way we did the face and body of the character was different as I produce the character designs. What we decided to do was switching shots between me and Guy, so I will be doing the clean up for Guy's inbetweens, while he does the clean up for mine, which turns out to be the perfect solution, as I will be able to correct the lines of the rough animation. The followings are examples of clean up I have done.

Major project - Aesthetical development

After the meeting discussing the art direction, and the basic aesthetic of the animation which was discussed before Luca started the colour test of the backgrounds. Personally I was strongly inspired by the feature film Ethel and Ernest, and the Big Bad Fox in the MAF 2017. As it is a narrative animation, the story is smooth and calm, we decided that water colour fits the best. 

Also based on the final refined design of the characters, I started to test out the colours on chosen frames of the animation.