Miaow miaow miaow

I'm very tired and can't think of relevant titles for blog posts right now. I can tell you however that I've finished modelling all the buildings for our 3D barrel roll running in place bonanza shot, and I've moved on to trying to work out how to UV map and texture. Not just any texturing either, I'm trying to make the buildings look like 2D images. Not quite as easy as I'd hoped. Here's how I'm currently doing:

All thoughts and feedback appreciated. Here's looking at you, 3D people. By which I mean fellow animator types who are proficient in 3D modelling, etc. Not just people who exist in three dimensions. Although all of you are also welcome to comment, of course. Ahem.

Production Report!

So, as far as production goes...we're getting there (passes out with terror). Finalised the timings of the animatic today so just need to collect a teeny bit of dialogue and we'll slap it on here.

At the moment we're getting through layouts (2D and 3D) and starting on key animation. We may be a bit late in the day starting animating however spending tons of time on story, characters and environment design is going to make it all the better! I think the five of us are heavily into these aspects and it's probably one of the only times we're going to get free reign in pre-production so I feel its been really worthwhile.

Being totally happy with the script etc, we're ready to get stuck in and get as much done before the Christmas break. We've set ourselves an ambitious task but we believe 'it's doable'. I can say that we will definitely be looking for Inbetweeners, Clean-up artists and Colourists. Before the holidays we'll hopefully be arranging a wee meeting just to find out who's all on board and what you'd like to do. We'll keep you informed of a time and date in a few weeks time, via a poster to entice you.

That's all for now =)

Gummies!

Gummy Bear Model sheet

Water Gummy Model Sheet

Some usual gummy expressions that they usually express

A pretty rough turnaround of the bears on all fours

And some breakdowns to make your own bear =D

Tom Paxton: Model Citizen

So I've finished up work on the expression sheets, action sheets and lip sync shapes that were placed in my care, and now I've moved on to modelling some buildings for one of the more complicated shots in the film. It dawned on me as I opened Maya that this was the first time I had done any 3D since second year, and I had forgotten everything I had previously known about navigating the software. I seem to be picking it up okay now though, and with more than a little help from the wonderful Kieran Duncan ( http://kieranduncan.blogspot.com/ ) I can now present for you all a little sneak peak. No UV mapping or texturing as of yet, just a simple model based on Kat's absolutely stunning building designs. Any feedback is more than welcome, I don't really know what I'm doing...

I veggin love colouring

Been working on some colour scripts as well as colour palettes for the town. Tom P whipped up a few ways to colour the characters and we placed them on the background to see how it would work. We left out the character with solid black lines as he stood out too much, so just the one without lines (and a drop shadow) and the one with coloured lines was left.

However we're slightly torn between which one works best, that and the original colour palette for the town (the orange one) was causing the characters to blend in too much. After adjusting the colours a little, we ended up with this more pinkish reddish colour scheme.

So yeah, opinions on what works and what doesn't would be great!

Also some quick colourscripts to get a feel of things for each scene, still a fair few to do but they're really fun :)

Size comparison

Gummy Bears and wenchs will be added shortly.

Final character designs

Thought I'd get up our up to date since so much as changed since before Summer. We knew the characters were still jarring because we tried to design them together so decided Tom P's style was the look that suited best. Mostly anything Tom draws is just hilarious, especially the Captain.

So here be the model sheets!

"Captain" Artie Choke

"Burly" John Burlyman

"Drunky" Drunk girl (too drunk to remember her real name)

"Hipster" Caesar Saladé

Jake Finnigan