Seaside concept work

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:

Pup acting scene

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.

Pup acting scenes - part 3

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.

Acting scenes of Pup part 2

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.

More Concept work on the environment

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.

Here are my concept work examples:

Concept work on seaside

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

Acting scenes of Pup

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.