ANNAMATIONS

After a few brainstorming and brainwrecking sessions i came up with an idea for my final major project while trying to sleep. A mixture of my childhood and the amazing comic character Calvin (& Hobbes), I thought of animating a story of a boy that hates bathtime. He imagines that there is a huge octapus in his bathroom that is very determined to wash or eat him or both. After a lot of kicking and screaming the boy loses the fight and is plunged into the bath tub with his clothes still on. In real life, it was his mum that put him in the bath tub and the octapus is just a floating bath toy.

Some early sketches and character studies:

concept drawing

sketch

squarehead boy

character pozes

octobathus

tentacles

Storyboards I made for our group project 3D short, Dreamcatching. Team members Sarah and Justin liked the general concept and colour scheme so I took the task of a sort of an art director since we all worked on developing the story and all sections of the film.

Drawn in pencil and coloured in Painter - using a wacom and digital paint was new and exciting to me so i got carried away and coloured all the storyboards, which helped to keep in mind the look, lighting and colours we were aiming for.

dream-boards1

dream-boards2

dream-boards3

My first character from 2D to 3D! I really enjoyed researching into native american legends and visuals, and designing the character was quite fun.

character ideas

character ideas2

Below is the final design for the character and the 3D model. He is my version of a wooden doll that protects children from nightmares using a dreamcatcher as a net.I would have liked to also add textures to his wrist and ankle cuffs but being made for a group project it was more important to spend time bringing him to life! Rig by Sarah Hale.

character sheet

My BA final year major project was a short 2D animation, Petrified. With a team of two second year animators, an illustrator (for the painted backgrounds) and film students specialising in producing, editing and sound we worked hard for 8 months to realise an idea that i pitched during my second year - but which changed and was improved and developed by the team.

Below are some stills showing the main preproduction development:

my early storyboards, 

early storyboards 1

early storyboards 2

character designs for the two main characters,

Girl character design

Cat character design

development of the style of the film. 

basic room layout in XSI

Room concept in ink

Early production still

Final film still