Expression with colour

With colours.

Head turn-around with colour and layout

I have added hair movement, walking movement (going up and down) and background (it will be moving with the character) to see if it works with the character design.

I still need to work on the timings of up-down movement but other than that I think it's working...?

Head-turn practise

This scene comes before she discovers the butterfly, when she is exploring the forest. So she will be looking up, look at the side and possibly come back to the front to find the butterfly.

I want this scene to be nice and slow, at the moment I think her head moves too quickly so I will need to work on the timings.

Expression

 Practice of girl's expression, today I have tried her surprise-smile.

This scene is the part when she finds the butterfly while she was exploring the forest. So this scene is mainly concentrated on her face movement, to keep everything simple her body and head won't move. (Maybe hair?)

Hand animating practise

Here is the practise animation of Hand movement. I think this is going to be one of the hardest scene (even though this scene is like a second long...). Hands are so hard to draw and get the right proportion. I may need to re-think about my character's hand design.

Layout Plans

 Layout Prototype (line art).
I have asked Brooke Hayes to do the final Line art of the layout.

Butterfly again...

Butterfly with colour.

I have also tried the glitter effect on the butterfly. For the glitter I will stich with just white colour to keep things simple, probably add more glitter on the actual one .

Animatics on Youtube...

Youtube link of my Animatics.

Butterfly again

After hearing very helpful advice from my tutor I have edited the butterfly's wing shape and worked out how butterfly moves.
I have drawn a guideline to show how butterfly does not fly in the straight line.

I think it looks much better than my previous one!

Animating butterflies are harder than I thought it would be.

General updates...

I have not been able to make any progress last week due to my sudden illness.
As it has affected my other chronic illness I have not been well for over a week now.
So I had a chat with my tutor and decided a few things to make my situation a bit easier...

Health is definitely the priority so I will be concentrating on getting better. I am going through several treatments and it can interfere my working schedule, so I will still be working on the project but with a bit of flexible deadlines so that I can also concentrate on my health treatments.

Once I get my feedback I will be working on what I need to do in terms of passing my first term during Christmas.

Butterfly Practise

Another Butterfly practise. Maybe too bouncy?

Walk cycle development

Added arms and fixed the legs.

Further plans...

I have worked out the plans for the layout design.

I will need 8 layout designs, all 1280x720 resolution except one which is going to be 1580x720 since I want a long layout design. Mostly forest designs except 2 which is going to be the fairy pond.

For the line art I have asked Brooke Hayes to work on this, and Alison Oxborrow for the colours. I think if they combine their artwork it will look really good since I liked Brooke's line art and Alison's paintings.

For the time schedule I have asked them to get them done by the latest, early January so that I can make sure that I have everything ready to start the production.



I will be working out the schedule for the animating soon.

Final Animatics

Here's the final animatics, (Without sounds at the moment, currently searching for someone to help with this)

I have made a slight change on the scene where the girl is trying to catch the Butterfly (the front view part) into the side shot to make the animating easier.

Final Character design

Final Design for Girl and Fairy.

Glitter 2

Added more glitters to make it more 'magical'. This is going to be one of the most fun, but time consuming part to animate.
For this I did animate individual glitters in a separate layer but I guess I can duplicate the layers and re-position it to cut some processing time.

Fairy animation development

I have developed the previous fairy animation. I couldn't work out the wings on the previous one so I have developed for this one. (Draft)

Glitter animation practise

On the butterfly scene I wanted to add a glitter effect around the butterfly to show that this butterfly is not an ordinary butterfly, it's an extraordinary butterfly. I want it to be glittery and shiny.

This is the test of the glitter effect. I think it will work with more glitter, but this is really time consuming... so I may need to think of an alternative ways.

Fairy Animation practise

I tried animating fairy's wings today.
In the film fairy won't move much apart from her wings, her body stay sitting down.

I am going to make a slight change on her wings, instead of Swallowtail Butterfly I will change the design based on Panchala Ganesa (Tailless Bushblue), which is a blue butterfly with simple wing shape.

The reason for this is to simplify the animating time, also the colour blue would stand out really well with the red mushroom.

Animation Practise - Hair Movement

Another development of Hair movement.

Layout style and Concept art

 This is the main struggle so far, deciding the layout style to match with my character.

The top image is done by me, the character stands out too much and the art style does not match.

Layout is done by 2nd Year Student Brooke Hayes, She has done cartoon-style layout which matches with my character better than my original design.

In terms of the art style I think I am heading more to the cartoon style direction, My original plan was to make the layout a bit more realistic but I found out that it would not match with the character design. To match everything I either need to change the character design into more realistic style, or change the layout which is probably better since I am happy with my character design.

I have asked other 2nd year Students to show me their layout designs, and I will compare all of them and decide the best design to match with my character design.

Character head-turn (draft)

A quick turn-around of my character.

Mushroom design

A quick drawing of Mushroom. For the mushroom design I want them to look as realistic as possible, so I will take a lot of time on them.

They are quite easy and fun to draw,  so I think I will enjoy drawing them on the final actual work.

Character design development

I wanted to keep my character design as simple as possible, so I've fit her size in the average criteria, with a slight bigger head and thinner leg to give a bit of character into the design.

This is the initial design of her, I have followed the circle, triangle and square rule. Her personality is kind, but active and enthusiastic so I've made her head a circle shape with triangular nose and sharp hair to show the active personality. Her body is almost a triangle shape too to also show her enthusiastic personality.

The fairy is going to be about her head size, so bigger than ordinary butterfly size.

She will be holding an A3 Sketchbook with a pencil.

 Slightly big thigh to show her activeness, slight big chest to show the girly-ness.

Different expression of her.

Field Trip - Newark-on-trent Lake

I went to Newark-on-trent and found a nice public walking path with lots of trees and lake.

 

 

I have also found good fungi for my mushroom design.

 

This fungi is pretty much what I was looking for, I can just picture a tiny fairy sitting on them, resting.

Amanita muscaria - Poisonous Mushroom, one of the most recognisable and widely encountered in popular culture.


Layout Plan

This is a Layout plan from the birds-eye view. I wanted to keep everything simple so my character will be moving in a straight line as it shows with pink arrow. Nothing decorative, just trees and ground in the middle.

Animatics developed

Changed the beginning and the pond scene.
Beginning should look better with the character's whole body is in the screen.

Pond scene I wanted to draw it in perspective, I have shown the mushroom more so it shows what the fairy is sitting on.

Hair movement

I have tried an experiment of my character's hair movement. It would look like this with the wind.

Walk Cycle

(Ignore the faded lines!!)

I have worked on Walk cycle today. No arms, still a bit jumpy.