More sketches + early storyboards

A few more designs I've drawn out for my project. This week's new addition: CYBER PENGUINS!!!

This takes influence from various cybernetic things and penguins, which vary from Teen Titan's Cyborg and Star Trek's Borgs to Madagascar's penguins and various other generic penguins.


Epic sketch of RNO versus our hero. Kinda which I had more felt tip colours at my disposal. Btw the katakana in the moon is 'n', the one I'm most familiar with.

To the left, a go at the dragon, kinda influenced by the big furry one from Neverending Story. To the right, a vampire wizard, a mash up of the current crazes of Harry Potter and that fish lipped guy from Twilight. Also featured are some cracks for the foil character who I'm just calling 'Smarmy Git', and a few attempts at the Warrior showing his emotional response.

Left: Professor Manegg once again. Here, I've done another throwback to the Sonic games that influenced his design by going through their logic of 'hitting things with hedgehogs makes them explode'. Right: Lil sketches of Warrior, Manegg, RNO and Fire Sumo.

I've made a start on a few early storyboards. I've also drafted up an early script.

Left to Right: Warrior vs Manegg, Warrior vs RNO and Warrior vs Cyber Penguin Army

A Look at HMV

So, to make an animation for HMV, I have to get a somewhat decent understanding about who it is I'm trying to appeal to (which would probably work better for me than when I went into doing a thing for a poker company with zero poker knowledge).



HMV is something of a multimedia store. Represented by it's well known logo of a dog named Nipper perked in front of a gramaphone, it's initial focus was as a record store. The name and mascot come from Francis Barraud's painting, "His Master's Voice". Nowadays, the stores sell the latest music, dvds, blu-rays and video games, as well as certain bits of technology such as headphones and iPods. Their competitors in this regard would be Zavvi (formerly Virgin Megastores), and various other online stores such as Play.com or Amazon. In regards to videogames, they also have competition from various game outlets such as GAME, Gamestation and GameStop. The website is also currently working on a download section, which I assume pertains mostly to music, but could also offer downloadable game titles similar to the Steam distribution service.



At current, their brand look features a lot of rounded fontage and focuses around three main colours; black, white and pink. Like it has done over the years, it also features their mascot, Nipper, in the logo. Oh, and there's usually some cockney geezer working the voiceovers. With what I have in mind, finding a way to incorporate the brand trademarks, which are generally futuristic and bold, into my epic adventure kind of theme, would be quite difficult. General protocol for adapting logos into these scenarios generally involved a patchwork or metallic theme, so if I saturate some of the colours I could make it work. Although dogs you can stick just about anywhere and they'll fit.



In fact, looking at various adverts for HMV, they're pretty much nothing beyond a trailer or music video with some logos and a price tag slapped on top sandwiched between some fancy transitions. In fact, this was the only advert I found that was any different.



What I plan to do is radically different from all of that (particularly cos I can't be arsed to go through all the legal brewha of sticking movie/music video footage into the thing). I want the advert to say, 'Come to HMV, we rock', as opposed to 'Oh hey this new thing is out and I suppose you can get it at this place'. It's all about making HMV a preference, not simply an option.

As far as determining a target audience goes, one thing to immediately point out is this is an online shop we're promoting her. To buy things from online shops, you need credit or debit cards, something I'm pretty sure noone under the age of 16 has, so we can cheerfully strike that age group out of the picture. Going with what they generally show on adverts, there's a lot of the latest actiony movies, interspersed with your generic X-Factor shit, which puts the average audience somewhere in the early 20s. If we take into account the media hungry university student, you're looking at a target audience of about 18-25, give or take a few years. Sticking in a lot of movie-like stuff into my animation should appease the young adults. ;P

Some more concept art

Been mostly sorting out my tax return this past week so there hasn't been too much time on this thing, but I have done a few more doodles.

I get the feeling I should watch Beowulf at some point

Knowing I have a general habit of coming up with one character design and more or less going with it (it comes from a job where you don't have time to waste on concepts), I decided to have a crack at some various designs, although they generally stuck to the beardy muscly variety, with the exception of the top left, which is influenced a little by Kratos from the God of War videogames. For the muscly designs, I tried thinking about how I can compose the dudes out of various shapes, mainly triangles and squares.

When thinking about the epic battle montage (what I may do is just produce one or two 30 second animations for the contest brief, then use the remainding time to make a full version for uni), one of the things that popped into my mind was the opening one and a half minutes of the ever-so infamous episode of the Super Mario World cartoon, Mama Luigi.



With 'Fire Sumo' fresh in my mind, I thought to myself, 'hey, there should BE a fire sumo'. Who's gonna make the connection? >_>

Fire SUMO!!!

So what you basically have is what it says on the tin, er, paper. A sumo, that's on fire. I drew it out with my fancy felt pens, starting with the orange outline, throwing in some yellow shade, then some more orange shade and finished off with some red highlighting to bring out the outlines. Marvellous. If I do go with Fire Sumo, I may present his scene in a traditional Japanese style (ie. not anime, think more that BBC Promo from the 2008 Olympics).

Also feature, an idea for an iPod-based badnik that never really caught on.

Since HMV sells its fair share of video games for sale, I figured it'd be fair game (sorry) to give that side some representation. When you think videogame nasties, a large number of people would most likely think of good ol' Dr Robotnik (aka Dr Eggman) from the Sonic games. And thus, came the creation of Professor Manegg, who represents the dark side of all things...erm egginess, sporting an easter-style pencil crayon face and a lil bread soldier sticking into his gooey insides. As well as the obvious Robotnik influence, I thought about the old-school videogame hero Dizzy, an egg who also sports red gloves and boots. This reference stuck out due to recently working on a Weebl series called '8 Bit Pwny Club', of which one of the characters also parodies Dizzy. I also drew up Professor Manegg in flash for the lulz.

The brown chequered background is a reference to Robotnik's ball of doom from Sonic 1.

Will post some more concept art, and maybe give a little thought into research, in the next post. Stay tuned!

The idea that will happen

Whilst contemplating the idea of the clockkeeping mouse (note to self: learn to title stuff better), the tutors brought up the idea of submitting competition briefs for design awards, something everyone participated in last year for the D&AD Awards.

'Black Hole Sheep' - my animation for Motion Graphics. It didn't win the D&AD award.

With the tutor generally deciding this year's briefs for D&AD were rather crap, another source of competition briefs were shown via the YCN Student Awards. This had a more appealing range of briefs, ranging from Cartoon Network to Monster Munch (the latter of which is surprisingly enough to be targeted at 18-25s, for nostalgia and student munchies I guess?)
The one that struck a chord with me was HMV's brief in which participants had to design something to promote their supposedly easy to use website. As I thought about what I could include, I thought...ADVENTURE!

Before you ask, yes, I am completely bonkers.

The main pitch I had stuck in my head, which would be about 60 seconds in length, or two 30 second TV spots, was to have a brave warrior, the most clichéd money can buy, go on an epic quest, fighting all sorts of horrific demons and monsters from legend, fiction and my spur-of-the-moment attaching of adjectives, all to get that one thing who truly desires.

A Scrubs Season 7 Boxset (or whatever's the commercially hip product of the time of release).

That's when we kick in the narrator, who tells us that the alternative is to use HMV's website to get the latest DVDs, music and games delivered straight to your door instead, to which our hero responds with a daytime friendly alternative to 'FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU-!!!'

Some concepts for the idea, featuring Mr Burly (we'll just call him that for now.)

I pretty much just started the concept artwork for this project right in the middle of everyone else presenting their idea pitches, but the general idea was to have this rather OTT viking type dude with bulging muscles, tight leather trouses, and an ultra sexy beard. The influences speak for themselves, but since we apparently have to go about 'explaining' this stuff, they include Eddie Riggs from Brutal Legend, the Scotsman from Samurai Jack, Prometheus from Disney's Hercules, Gimli from Lord of the Rings, and more or less any large bearded person from a DC cartoon. Will look into over influences, as well as experiment with more designs, later on.

A fun aspect will be trying to come up with various threats that stand between our hero and his Zach Braff fix. It'd have 'parody' written all over it. Legends talk of a fierce dragon, I drew a fifty armed dragon. Those sirens Homer went against in Homer's Odysee? Let's remodel them into manufactured pop-sirens. The fearsome Black Knight of...y'know screw it, let's just throw in a Dragonball reference. And a giant killer octopus not good enough for ya? Three words.

RADIOACTIVE.
NINJA.
OCTOPUS.

Oh dear god, YES

Having pitched this idea as a back up for my clockkeeper idea, my tutor was quick to notice that I was a lot more enthusiastic about this kind of idea than the other one, to which the other students unanimously agreed. HMV ad it is then. And since I technically work in advertising (I do the occassional promotional tidbit as part of the Weebl's Stuff team), it'll be great experience. Naturally, there is that whole comfort zone thing to generally worry about, but I plan on going beyond the general use of flash, most likely implimenting the use of After Effects and Photoshop as well. I also recently downloaded some music creation software called FL Studio, so if I can figure the workings of that out, I might even be able to supply my own epic soundtrack instead of mooching off the various royalty free sources.

The flipside is that due to the competition's earlier deadline, I need to get the main beef of the animation completed by mid-March (the main module's deadline is in May), but it shouldn't be too much of an issue, as this is the kind of thing I'm good at, and I have a bit more motivation going for me. I know my general hope for this degree was to develop my skills into epic festival-short making proportions, but if I can apply the stuff I've learned into a kickass advert, that's bound to be a good push in the good ol career direction.

The idea that didn't happen

Okay, so following on from Rob Sprackling's talk, I got thinking about how I could put his advice to good work. Having heard his bit on creating a world and adding a contrasting element, and hearing one student say 'grandfather clock' I thought a contrast to a grandfather clock would be a digital LCD clock. So I thought about there being wise old mice living in a grandfather clock, who gets visited by LCD shaped aliens from a digital watch ship. My general thought was to keep it to one, elderly and probably lonely old mouse.

Mockup of Clockkeeper. Lineart in Photoshop, CG in Art Rage 2.

I thought of a mice for the main character since, as any fan of Hickory Dickory will tell you, clocks and mice go hand in hand. Influences for the character design above can attributed to typical kindly sage type people, as well as various animated mouse features such as An American Tail and The Tale of Desperaux. The staff thing can be attributed to many staff carrying people of all kinds, particularly ones with magic powers such as Mumbo's wand from Banjo Kazooie, and I think Clank uses one in Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time.

Quickie mock up drawn in Flash.

When it came to his alien friend, I took inspiration from LCD digits you find on alarm clocks, although the main issue came from trying to figure out a look that both represents this and would animate well. The most common design was a simple body and head piece, with blue backlight (inspired by my old digital watch) for its eyes and a number on its front. Not particularly sure what it would have been for, but it could've been used to show expression or, in the case of multiple ones, as an identifier. The general look is reminiscent of Eve from Wall-E, with a little touch of Mr. Game and Watch, the hero of various LCD games (this was also a type of animation I considered for it). A general problem would be how he would interact with things, since the cubic nature of the character is rather restrictive.

The main, and probably fatal, issue was trying to come up with a story that links the two characters together and gives it meaning. I was hoping to aim for one of those buddy movies much like the majority of Pixar animations (Wall-E, Up and Finding Nemo ring bells). One plot point I considered was for the mouse to have a grandson who was unfortunately killed by a mischievious cat, leading the elder mouse to become lonely, scared of the outside world and untrusting of others. His design is a little reminiscent of one of my own characters, Bunnycat, who like my other character, sports a pair of goggles, though his pair would be more fitting to the timeline.

When I showed this idea to my tutor, the idea of a grandfather clock scenario was well received, but there was general criticism over the necessity of the LCD alien, my inability to fixate on a story and the general overhyping of things (a problem that bit me in the butt during Date for One's production).

And that's when I showed them my other idea.

Experimenty stuff, Rob Sprackling

After talking with one of my tutors, who also does a lot of flash stuff, I decided to try out some experimental animation tests.
First off, I tried a little rotoscope animation, mixed with some keyframe animation. Basically, tracing over my head as I make swift movements as a start, then keyframing various bits near the end for an original effect.



Next, I tried using live reference to try reference of my hand and mouth (which isn't easy when the only reflective thing in the room is a clock), and keyframing inbetween it, in a vain attempt to get better at hand and mouth drawing.



Next, I practised some morphing skills. Using a photo of MrSimon as reference, I traced over it, and then modified the drawing at each step, similar to how one could stretch Mario's face in Super Mario 64.



By the fourth experiment, I had more or less completely lost it. I took a picture of myself, drew over it and made me look like Dr Robotnik of all people, and then lipsynced it to a 'nutshell' audio clip.





So yeah, I hope to experiment with various different things. Question is, what?

Today, I went to a talk by Rob Sprackling, who wrote the screenplay for Mike Bassett: England Manager (he showed clips, it was funny shit) who was hosting a talk on how to write funny stuff. To my surprise, it was a lecture I was not only able to stay awake for, but took an active interest in.

He talked about how you go about generating original ideas, a skill this anime obsessed dork really needs. One of the key starting points he mentioned was to start off with a world for your idea, then throw in an element that clashes with that world. For example, for one of the movies he is writing, Gnomeo and Juliet, he's taken the world of cheeky garden gnomes and thrown in the total contrast of epic romance. This is proving to be an interesting starting point for coming up with ideas, as when the world of grandfather clocks were brought up, I silently thought something along the lines of digital watches representing an evolved alien species, an idea I may expand upon.

When talking about characters in funny films, he mentioned there will be one or two 3D characters that the story revolves around. This character would develop over the course of the film, learn something that changes his personality or something (a good example being Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove, who goes from egotistic emperor, to caring friend.) Then, there are the one-joke characters, such as yes men, flawed geniuses and plain goofballs, who don't particularly need any long journeys or backstories, but have an impact on the central character which brings out his facets. (Like how an annoying character brings up the agitated side of someone).

Storywise, he said there should some self-contained stories in the movie, but mentions they should join with the other stories to keep the overall narrative flowing. One example that springs to mind is 'Phineas & Ferb', where the adventures of Perry the Platypus somehow end up effecting what Phineas and Ferb are doing.

He then talked about theme, where he said a film needs to be going somewhere and have something to say, a rule I generally break with my animations, since I just tend to focus on making it for the sake of making it. Lastly, he talked about how the structure should have a beginning, middle and an end, and that within the first 10 minutes of a film, you should have a good idea of what will happen in the last 10 minutes, give or take the twist in the middle.

All in all, it was an interesting talk, and I hope to gain something from it.

Date For One released!

Well, my movie's all done. Was going to make further additions, but I was just totally zoned out and anything I would've done seemed a bit forced, so I simply fixed up some small bits and called it a day.



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