Previous to drafting a concept work of the pier I have made an angled view of the town from the beach.
This drawing has been made before a town plan, therefore a lot of the buildings are jumbled up and drawn randomly. However I'm pleased with how this looks because I'm not usually drawing buildings.
Furthermore I edited this drawing by adding more hills behind the Jenny's house, to not make it look like the only house with nothing behind it.
Moreover I took it as my job to make a town plan, just to have a general idea of where the different buildings were and to work out how to make Jenny's house still stand out but not to have it look lonely among the shops and other buildings.
My next task was to draw some concept designs of the pier that Pup is going to roll off to the sea. I have found few references and this photo below seemed as a good starting point. I have made the concept drawings consisting of the same pier design but looked at from a different angles.
As you can see they are in a rough state, this is because my idea for this was to just get a feeling of how it might look like. I decided to add some street lamps, benches as well as little long distance vision goggles that can be found at some beaches. I feel that the lamps and benches should be kept however the other should be scrapped because it does't make sense to have those where there is no barrier to lean on. However overall I'm rather happy with this whole design because it makes the pier look more attractive as well as it has a feel that during summer there are tourists walking along on the pier and enjoying their holidays from morning till evening.
I have made new concept drawings of the same scenes that appeared in previous however I have applied my new knowledge and style to the new images. I'm rather happy with how they look. I'm hoping that they will fit the desired style of the project as I am yet to receive feedback about these pieces.
Here are the finished pieces:
After some talk with the project leader, I have tried to give the concept sketches another go with some feedback and extra notes to remember about the style, filters and brushes to use for Photoshop to achieve that style. Here is the new concept sketch:
This is the initial drawing I did. Afterwards I consulted the project leader about it to see how she felt about it and whether I was going in the correct direction with the art style. After some feedback from her I know which direction to go in.
Here is another concept drawing after the second feedback:
I feel that this concept drawing is very good because it looks very close the original style and what it is meant to look like. I'm rather happy with this. In this I have tried to use filters and different textures and patterns that it almost looks like it's been painted.
For my other job, I'm drawing up some concept art for the seaside view. I have been mostly using the photos in previous post as my reference towards how the beach is meant to look like. I have tried to draw different views of the beach, just to get a feel of how the place could really look like. Furthermore I have tried to place it in the style of the project however I have not made it look like watercolour drawing and therefore I need to start again on this.
Here is the second set of concept drawings:
Here's another scene of Pup. I thought that since I have made the last few animations of Pup being happy and playful, maybe I should make an animation of Pup being scared, which is a different spectrum of actions altogether. I'm rather pleased with how this animation looks.
I feel that this animation may need few more frames of when Pups is trying to make himself smaller by backing away into a corner, however I think this clearly shows the concept that Pups is scared and wants to get away from something that is scaring him.
In between my practise of drawing Pup up close, I decided to continue with the task of making few short animation tests of the character. Since I feel that Pup is a very playful seal and the thought of him balancing a ball on his nose made me itch towards animating that. Here's the finished version:
I am so happy with this. I feel that I have gotten the hang of animating seals and Pup. I'm feeling a lot more confident in what I'm doing and I feel that my contribution to the team will go well throughout the production process.
I have thought of making few scenes with Pup, just being himself a playful seal puppy. My idea for this was that since Jenny the human character in this story enjoyed finding and collecting shells, I'd have Pup finding one and being very proud of it, almost like a 5 year old might react in doing so. So here's the finished rough animation:
I am very happy with this little animation. It's been seen by the team leader and after getting some feedback about some of the ease ins and general smoothness of the animation, this is the end result. Furthermore I feel that I need to practice drawing Pup up close more, because I seem to make some small mistakes in regards to his design.
After receiving a basic plan of the scene. I decided to work on some drafts of different views of the seaside and street. I'm rather happy to be helping with some concept work as it's an area of interest to me. I have researched for some examples of a sea-sides with cliffs as well as what a sea side town might look like. The town in the story needs to have shops and attached buildings like the first example picture below. The rest of the pictures are general sea side views from different angles.
I have offered some more help from my side by taking on a small challenge of designing the beach. Estelle (leader of the project) wanted some small drawings of how the beach could look like where Jenny and Pups meet. I did some research and found that the Cornish seaside seemed as the best reference to the beach since we wanted a cliff face.
Here is the picture I have used as a general guideline for a coast with cliffs:
and here are test drawings of the seaside, I have taken on the style of the project and drew them as the y show in the storyboard: First one is with blue guide lines, second without them and third with Pups
After receiving very positive feedback about my running seal and getting informed that I didn't need to change anything. For my next challenge I decided to take on simple actions and acting of Pup, these short tests will not appear in the final film but they are to see the general movement and expressions of Pup.
As a first challenge I thought of Pup rolling down a small cliff, it's something cute and clumsy like most seals movements.
As much as I like this animation I feel it needs a little bit more 'oomph', for me it doesn't feel like the hit at the bottom of the small cliff is correct. It feels like the amount of weight that Pup carries doesn't correspond with the gravity of the fall. I really like the rolling action in the animation because it's not something I have tried before and I think it gives off the correct vibe of an object in our case Pup rolling down the small cliff/hill. I have showed this animation to the leader and I have received a lot of feedback in regard of improving the animation. After few sketches and hint from the team I have redone this scene and it looks like this:
I think this version is so much better than the previous version. It has the right timing and it's what I was looking for which is the clumsiness of a seal. On the first version I animated him looking around to see if anyone noticed his clumsy fall as he laid on the ground, I decided that I needed to scrap that because it felt like it was too much for such a short scene to have. I feel really happy with this scene, it feels very fluid.
My second job was to test out a seal running on land. I took the seal run animation to the less realistic side, therefore I made the run a lot more energetic and with a lot more movement and spring to it.
I really enjoyed animating this because I was able to test out how far I can push the seals' movement limits whilst keeping it realistic in proportions. I have yet to receive feedback on this piece from the director of the project.
For my first assignment I was instructed to animate a seal walking along the ground. It's something I have not done before and I need to know how to do that since I've been assigned to animate Pups, the seal character. Here's a first take on the seal walk:
For reference to this seal walk I have used this video:
I'm not very impressed with this walk. It feels very still, it doesn't look like it's moving forward. I feel that I have got most of the movement correct, the only thing that needs change is the front of the body.
This is a second version of an walk cycle. After consulting the rest of the team for some tips and help, I animated this scene again. I feel that this walk cycle is a lot better than the first version.
I have never tried to animate a seal walk cycle, and I'm really happy with this. The whole movement feels a lot more natural. I know that there's a slight problem with the volumes of the snout but this animation was to get a feel of how a seal might move on ground thus it's rough state. I feel more confident in animating with the team because I know that I'll get the support if I need any and feedback on my work.
Here are all the sketches of character Pups with little annotations for me to remember some of his characteristics. I was using reference that was given to me beforehand. Half of the drawings are traditional and the other half is done digitally. I thought that it would be a good idea to draw Pups in both mediums especially when he's going to be animated in Flash therefore I needed to get good drawings of him digitally. I really enjoyed playing around with his design, putting him in various poses, especially when balancing something on his nose.
Before the start of this year, I had decided to make my own project. However I felt that I wouldn't get the help I needed to complete it therefore I decided to help with Estelle's project called 'Pup'. She decided to make me the lead animator of Pup the seal, which I am very happy to do. I have started to draw Pup from reference sheets that I have received from the director of the project (Estelle). I want to get into the style and an overall feel of the character to make sure that I'm able to recreate the emotions and behaviour Pups has in the story.
