Pre - Production Update

Wow, what a busy term it has been! I think things will only get busier as well - but that's cool as I enjoy all the work that I'm doing and have never in my life worked on such an exciting group project. It would be amazing to get 'Kernel' finished and it seems like we are off to a strong start with a Pre-Production bible consisting of 79 pages.

At the start of the term It seemed like I was destined to work a tiny bit on many different projects but as time has moved on I have found myself getting more and more involved with 'Kernel' which we have just found out, will be the only 3D animated short film going through to Production. Olly (the Director) and the rest of our team are very keen to get it finished so it is pretty important that we aim for less than 3 minutes long.

Our Lecturers have said that the Storyboard must be made clearer and suggested that Dan, Hugh, Max and myself have a go at editing the Story and Storyboard to make it clearer. Whilst this is adding significantly to my Christmas workload, I am happy to have this opportunity as I really enjoy Storyboarding. For anyone curious about how the Kernel Animatic is looking at the moment - see below.



Other work I will be showing on this post will include work for Shell and Paddy, Fentil and Box Boy. Out of these 3 projects only Shell and Paddy is going through to Production. Having said that they are still allowing Dan (Director of Fentil) to produce one polished shot for his project. My background for Shell and Paddy will probably not get used as I have only produced the one - which would break the consistency of Joe's backgrounds.

Here is all of the work I have done so far (since my last post.)

Kernel

The 'Cathexis Tree.' Reference, Concept and Design.

'The Shed.' Reference and Designs.

Plants that will be placed around the Dome shaped Greenhouse. Reference, Sketches, Photoshop experiments and Final designs.

Final Designs.

Top view of the Greenhouse. This shows the colour range of the Plants and where the plants will be placed.

Side views of the Greenhouse. These concept shots show the placement and size of the plants on both sides of the Greenhouse. The other 'green-ness' will be built up with long grass, and generic foliage, this will help unify the plants.

Fentil:

My job for this project was to produce a Matte Painting. For this I speed learned some techniques and covered about a 1/3 of this book. Thanks David B. Mattingly :-) Very helpful.

It was useful following along with the techniques outlined in this book and interesting building up a photo real image from scratch in layers. Here's my work in progress leading up to the final piece:

A quick 20 minute concept sketch:

Line Drawing:

Adding in the Tones - Light, Dark, Core, Cast Shadows and another layer (Final Darks) which is like doing an Ambient Occlusion pass in CG:

Applying a texture:

Here, I have warped a couple of textures to fit more snugly on the bottom centre-right side of the Rock. This has made a big difference but I felt with my time schedule and with what was required that it wasn't necessary to warp every bit of texture.

I repeated the process above to the other rocks, layed down some Colour Correction and a bit of clone stamping to neaten things up at the end.

The rocks were the main thing Dan wanted me to produce so the Ground, Clouds, Sun and Moon received much less attention. I learned a few more tricks and useful Hot keys with Photoshop doing this piece.

Shell and Paddy:

Here is my initial layout:

Final background (produced using Photoshop):

Box Boy

Darrien asked me to do the Bus Interior for his project. This was the last bit of work I produced this term and I did it from start to finish in about a day.

Sketches from Reference:

Final Layout:

Final Piece - here I borrowed some colours of Darrien's Concept for 'Box Boy.'

Added Graffity and Shadows.

Added Depth of Field (just for fun ^^)

What lays ahead...

So the 3 main areas of work that I would like to cover over the Xmas holiday are:

-The Storyboard for 'Kernel'
-The Draft Dissertation - Planning and Writing
-Making a good start at learning Nuke

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Our CND Film is a Success!

It is with great happiness and satisfaction that I can officially announce that we won the first prize of the Young Adults category of the Bristol CND film competition! I was very happy to receive our award at The Watershed cinema in Bristol. The following weekend I went up to London, where our film was screened at the BFI as part of the 'We The Peoples' Festival. Half the credit of the film goes to my Illustrator/designer friend Carl Norris who created the vibrant backgrounds. Also thanks to my Animator friend Tom Gameson for his animation of the little girl. Finally thanks to my little cousin Brenda Callis for her fantastic voice over!

Here is our film:



The official website of the competition can be found here.

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Final Concept and Background art pieces with WIP

To say I have been busy is an understatement! Over the last 4 weeks I have completed and handed in work (in time for deadlines) for 4 separate projects - including my CND film.

Final Pieces:

Kernel directed by Olly Skillman-Wilson.

Wife Left Home directed by Tom Gameson

Newgrounds project - London riots animation - Directed by Tom Gameson

Kernel directed by Olly Skillman-Wilson.

My role: Concept Art.

Brief: A concept art piece establishing the Greenhouse in it's city setting. Composition to look down between 2 buildings. There must be a layer of mist caused by the pollution.

At first I was unsure how to go about this - how does one draw a futuristic city with realistic perspectives? To get the ball rolling I went on intuition and made a little futuristic city in my bedroom out of stuff from around the house.

Maya came in very handy for this project.

I printed this screenshot off and worked from it getting the colours, adding in new ideas and more detail inspired by the photos I took of the city I made in my bedroom.

The next 4 images were achieved in one all night session as the deadline was approaching..

These billboard sketches are an important part of the setting. The protagonists character is enhanced and developed through his conflict with the doctrines of the society in which he lives. On a visual level these messages should stand out. Olly states in his script: "...the darkness of the smog and urbanity lit only by its media"

Olly gave me some pics where he caught water droplets on the lens of his camera and took photos of lights at night. I then brought this into Photoshop and applied the linear burn layer style to merge this in.

This last pic is with Olly's additions. He has added a looking-through-window effect which has really enhanced that 'you're there' feeling about it. The flares are a nice touch too. Nice work Olly :-)

My friend Marcel gave me some good feedback suggesting that further improvements could be made by lighting up the front of the skyscrapers at the bottom of the screen. This would help define them a bit more against the background without taking away from the murky misty effect.

Wife Left Home directed by Tom Gameson

My role: Concept Art

Brief: Design a nice morning environment around 'Dim' (the main character.) It is a typical English town.

Some of Tom's inspiration. Artwork from Pixar artists using marker pens and ink.

I used the same media here:

Using Photoshop I enhanced the colours:

Shell and Paddy directed by Thomas Spettle

My role: Background artist

In this shot we see a chase. Paddy chases Shell but then trips up over this branch-like creature. I reckon it should be quite a funny scene!

I checked with Thomas about not getting this done in time for the pitch - he was cool with it. Unfortuantly I couldn't complete it in time with all the other projects going on. Hopefully I will get it done soon. From now on I will add in 1 contingency day every week into my schedule to allow me to achieve all projects in time.

Newgrounds project - London riots animation - Directed by Tom Gameson

My role: Background artist

Tom did a bit of animation for my CND film. In exchange, I have produced 2 backgrounds for his project that he was working on throughout the Summer at Newgrounds.

For these, I have worked a lot by hand before going into Photoshop. Ralph Steadman has been a big inspiration for Tom so I tried to incorporate elements of his style into my work.

City background

Prior to this I did 4 half hour A5 tests of different styles. Tom picked out the one he liked the best - a bit of collaging with Ralph Steadman style lines. He wanted the buildings to surround and overwhelm the character.  For the final piece I worked in A3 using the same method as I did for the test. I then worked these up in Photoshop.

This is where Photoshop came in.

Park background

In this shot we will see the camera pan down on the right, then track to the left (hopefully these are the correct film camera terms I'm using!) Tom specified that the background is a bit run down, tucked away on a hill somewhere in London.

Tom's layout design:

My 20 minute Photoshop sketch just to get the depth values and a bit more definition.

I produced these elements by hand using Ink and pastels. I used pastels purely to get the colour and Ink for everything else. Here are all the different elements brought into Photoshop.

My first real go at Photoshop painting (of the rubbish) - using photographs for direct reference. Halfway through I thought 'Hang on - I can get Adobe Illustrator to do what I'm doing' so I did that for a test. It was a bit quicker doing it using Illustrator (the colour 6 filter) but I was pleased that when I did it myself in Photoshop the result was 10 times better.

The resolution of the full Image is 6344 x 2813 to allow for all the camera movements.

In this close up shot you can see the level of detail with a crisp packet stuck in the tree and plastic bags trodden into the dirt.

That's 4 weeks worth of work crammed into a couple of hours of blogging!

On a side note, I will be going to Bristol this Saturday as I have been invited to the showcase and prize-giving event of the CND film competition at Watershed cinema. I'm quite excited about seeing my work up in front of an audience!

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