Crow model sheet V2, 1st draft

Another draft of the crow's potential model sheet. I'm a little bit iffy about trying to draw a model sheet when I still don't feel entirely familiar with her body shape, so I think I might just return to doing some more sketches before I start trying to put one together. I'm mostly okay with the side view, and I'm almost alright with the front view (now that I've figured out that blasted beak) but the 3/4 view is still giving me hell. She looks really off-balance and I'm not keen on the head either.

This is by no means finalised and I'm going to go back and correct tons of anatomy/proportional mistakes, but I'm beginning to go a bit blind. If anybody has any critique it would be most welcome :]

Crow sketches/design considerations

Just some more crow sketches to familiarise myself with the physiology of the crow — looking at the head from various angles and such :] 

Image source

I saw this really lovely photo of a crow and the eyes are very striking — I wanted to play around with the way I drew the eyes to try and make them a little more 'crow like.' What do you guys think of the blue? 

That weird little cartoon character on the side there is 'Drinky Crow,' a character from a rather obscure cartoon from 2007 about a crow who... drank. A lot. That was about it. Anyway, I quite liked how his eyes looked so thought I might try and emulate is, but I'm not too sure how it would work on our crow. Might play around with it a bit more.

More general sort of body sketches to try and figure out the placement of wings and such. I looked at the way a couple of other artists drew crows to get an idea as to how the body could be simplified.

Crow colour palettes

Hello chaps! Just done a few colour schemes for our little friend and thought I'd put them up so you can have a look and tell me what you think :]

Was working mainly with the thought of blue/purple colour scheme, something quite  subdued in contrast to the relatively colourful scarecrow. I originally started by making the beak darker than the body, but it makes the mouth quite difficult to see. Overall I just think that it's too dark.

Personally I'm not keen on the orange beak — looks more like a duck! Jazzy then suggested making the beak lighter than the body which I think actually works really nicely. You can see her mouth and it keeps her looking a little more cheerful I think.

The last 3 (not counting disco crow) are probably my favourites so far. I was poking around on Google and a saw a few drawings where the crow's beak was more blue-ish in hue, so I tried it out and came up with 9 and 10 — 11, again, was inspired from another drawing where the crow was a brighter sort of purple with a brown beak and it looked really nice. So I stole BORROWED the idea. ;D

Personally, I think my favourites so far are 4, 8 and 10. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? :]

Edit: Agh! These look so much diffierent on my laptop screen. They're way brighter than I thought they would be - they looked super dark on the monitor in G01. Gotta try and fix that to keep them consistent across all monitors!

Progress report: 20/02/2012

Hi guys,

Fantastic work today guys - massive thanks to you all for making today such a success. Thanks to you all we're now a few days ahead of schedule - but unfortunately that doesn't mean we can take it easy ;]

Just to recap today and remind you all of the homework:

Progress report 20/02/2012

• Camera blocking and storyboarding completed. Tutorial with Ron suggested reference for the hang glider scene - the "crop duster" scene from North by Northwest. Jazzy posted it on the blog earlier today, so be sure to have a look at that!
• Massive progress with the character designs, which are now pretty much finalised. Brilliant work from both Sam and Jae - thanks to you both we have some very fun and unique characters that open up a lot of potential for some really fun movements. All we need to do is decide on a colour scheme for the scarecrow and we can start looking at making some model sheets and even building puppets by next week.
• Jazzy and Alex to work on animatics - ideally aim to have this completed by Monday 27th.
• Alex to slap together a quick animatic from storyboard images to check the timing/flow, and to help Jae make decisions regarding sound effects.
• Meeting on Wednesday 22nd to review character designs and begin model sheet production. Further discussion regarding progress from this point. Puppet building to be discussed.

Homework


Jae & Sam –  For Wednesday 22nd: Come up with some colour schemes for the scarecrow and practice drawing the characters in different poses. Use the storyboard as reference and re-create some of those key poses.
Alex – For Wednesday 22nd: Rough storyboard animatic to check timing/flow. Amend production schedule and timetable. Consider puppet design responsibilities/allocation. Assist with animatic/character design production where necessary.

Jazzy – Start moving animatic using refined storyboard images (aim for completion by Monday 27th)

Please let me help with something!! I don't feel I have much to do! :P

I'll be posting up the new production schedule after Wednesday once we've discussed how we're going to divide up the puppet design responsibilities. I'll also put a lot of great reference images and videos for everybody to use for drawing and animating the characters.

'Til Wednesday, good luck and happy trails

Alex

Progress report - 14/02/2012

Great work from everybody today guys, thanks again for all your contributions - hope your brains aren't too fried! Thanks to Jazzy for posting up the script so far - it's here for your reference so try and look over it during the next few days and make notes of anything you'd like to add, change or mention. Remember that we're aiming to get the first draft completed by Friday, which means we need to get an idea for a solid ending!

I'll be posting the rough thumbnails we used to develop the script a little later so you can see them as reference. I'll also post up the videos we looked at earlier!

Just to recap our progress today and remind you all of our homework:

Progress report 14/02/2012

• Talked about blocking and camera scripts. Managed to complete 2/3rds of the rough draft of the script - all it needs is an ending, then we can look at refining it slightly and starting to break it down into shots, ready for storyboarding. Andy made a post on myUCA earlier today advising that we should aim to have the animatics ready by the end of next week (24th February.) This is something we'll need to discuss ASAP - it's certainly possible, but it will means that we'll probably need to make compromises and come up with something solid for the script a little earlier than we'd anticipated. It's worth remembering that the animatic can change if it's not working, so it's probably best not to be too precious over the scripts and storyboards at this point.
• Discussed character design and established direction for each character. Some great designs from everybody and lots of great ideas came from it. To recap:
  
  Keep the scarecrow's eyes visible. Think about using his hat in his facial expressions - the angle of the brim can be used like eyebrows!
  
  Experiment with the idea of expressing the history of his conflict with the crow - stray feathers or twigs or leaves stuck in his clothes/hair?
  
  Jack Skellington would be a great reference for the body structure, with a big round head and stick-thin body. What other characters are tall and skinny? How do they move? Experiment with the idea of his arms - what are they made of? How can we emphasize his clumsiness? Perhaps his arms are twigs - one is shorter than the other, or he has leaves sticking out of his elbows.
  
  
  
  
  
  The crow design came together really nicely today. Sam made lots of great notes to work from - try keeping the rosy cheeks and slightly rounded beak. Have a look at Jewel from Rio for some ideas. The two characters are very similar, but we can tell which one's a girl. How have the designers made her different from Rio? What makes her look like a girl?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Alex to work on the production schedule. Ideally, we need to see this by the end of next week. A rough version will be created in time for our meeting on Thursday where we can discuss it further.

I think that's everything from today. Our next meeting will be on Thursday in G01 after the lecture. Let's all ask Liz if we can be placed in the same seminar group - preferably the earlier one - so that we have more time/brain cells to discuss everything. On Thursday we'll be talking briefly about the script so far, the possibility of animatics, the production schedule and also production roles - as well as anything else you guys would like to mention.

Keep a beady eye on this blog as I'll endeavour to post up a rough version of the production schedule tomorrow evening for you all to look at before we meet on Thursday. This will give you time to look it over and make note of anything you want to mention.

In the meantime, keep cracking! I'd also like to remind you all of the importance of the blog in this unit - and in general! I'd like to see you all uploading stuff at least once or twice a week if you can - it's a really valuable part of evaluating your ideas as well as getting feedback from everybody else even when we're not in a meeting or in class. Sorry to sound like a tutor! :) Let's see you guys uploading your character designs and notes so far! Then we can assemble them onto a separate page for easy access.

See you all Thursday!

Alex

Alex's scarecrow designs

Again, I started just by looking very generally at some scarecrows. I really liked the one in the lower right corner; a great example of a simple but pretty refreshing take on the conventional scarecrow!

I toyed with the idea that maybe the scarecrow could look as if he was trying to be scary, perhaps by giving him long, thin and pointed fingers — perhaps they could even be made out of sticks?

Jazzy specified that the scarecrow should be tall and very thin to emphasize his clumsy nature — maybe we could give him big hands and feet to further suggest this? 

I was looking at some other tall, spindly characters as a point of reference —Jack Skellington in particular, as though he's a little different to what we're going for in terms of design his exaggeratedly thin limbs and a rather large, circular head are quite nice features for a scarecrow. I really liked how the eyes and mouth looked on Jack so I tried to incorporate something similar into some of the sketches.

I was mostly just experimenting with body language and more head designs here; I wondered how a naive and slightly nervous character might hold himself, I thought perhaps with his feet turned inwards, but he just ended up looking really timid and anxious. 

A stocky design for the crow might work quite nicely with a scrawny scarecrow — the combination of tall/thin and short/stocky characters is quite prevalent in a lot of children's animation. Many notable cartoon duos have massively contrasting body structures:

Radically different body structures in visual media where two or more main characters dominate the screen helps to create visual distinction and interest — strong silhouettes so that the characters remain recognisable in any given situation (at a distance, in the shadows, even in different costumes)

I thought this might be a nice idea to play around with and so experimented a little more with the idea of a short, fat crow:

I started trying to think more about character interaction at this stage — how the scarecrow might physically respond to the crow whenever it comes near him. Should it be outright terror, or is it more subtle? Is he merely uncomfortable around crows, or physically repulsed?

Was thinking about what sort of clothes he might wear and was slightly amused with the thought that, being a scarecrow, he just wore whatever leftover tat the owners had lying around — an outsized sweater, a lonely oven glove?

I'm going to focus more on actual scenarios and character interaction now, to try and really get to grips with the relationship and personalities of the two characters. Hopefully this will help me bring out more character in these drawings!

Character references - Scarecrow

Just some little images to help inspire you! There's a disappointing lack of decent images on Google - they're mostly all scary, evil-looking things which isn't quite what we're going for, eh?!

This one's really interesting. I know it's not really what we're going for, a bit too short and stocky, but it's a good example of ideal design! Very simple but interesting and recognisable. Brilliant eyebrows as well!

I thought this one was quite interesting - how about using straw for fingers?

(Sorry, this one just made me laugh!)

Hope that's helpful - see you all tomorrow!

;]