Dragon Bait and Animate

Part of our course for this semester requires us to take a character through a full development process, from 2D concept art, turnaround and model sheet as well as a storyboard and animatic before we take the character into 3D and create a model that can be rigged and posed. I had originally planned to use the character I'm going to use for my final Project but since she is going to be low poly and not have a lot of detail, this assignment seemed like a good chance to try something different. My plan now is to use a character I've had in the back of my mind for a few years... more like 6 years. The Dragon Walker. She's a fantasy character with strong links to dragons and magic and has a tribal feel to her. So I started out with my inspiration board. I love the style of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Moana and Fable: The Journey artwork. So I pulled all of these references and ideas together to help me design my character. I went through several different sketch

After changing my idea (and with the possibility that it might change further), I looked at roughing out a character that I could use as my protagonist. I started off with an inspiration board using images I'd been collecting for the past few weeks. This included a little of the environment, but mostly of the character, focusing on the character's role and outfit. From here, I sketched up some designs just using pencil and paper to see what kind of route I wanted to go down. At this stage I wanted to just keep the body shape semi-realistic without pushing the forms too much but as I keep developing the character, I'd like to see what I can do with shapes and silhouettes. In hindsight, I don't like the protagonist carrying a gun of any description as I think this takes away from the idea of her being a helper and trying to find the 'cure'.  I tidied up the lines a little in Photoshop before adding some rough colour to help work out where I wanted

After discussing the initial post-apocalyptic idea with my course leader it became apparent just how obvious the cliches in my story would be. We talked about how I could either try and completely avoid the cliches or find a twist, a difference in them that would intrigue the audience. Already, the style I'm working with is going to be different from a lot of what has been done before but the story itself has to change. One of the big cliches I've fallen into is this idea of a self-sufficient character who has some kind of military experience or background. So to avoid this issue I would like to avoid this "soldier stereotype" by making my main character some kind of nurse or paramedic, or perhaps a fire fighter or medic in the armed forces. With this kind of character I can have a uniform that could be recognised by the audience, something familiar that grounds them in the universe. I was also watching the original Blade Runner with my family last night

The last week has been spent on trying to further solidify my idea in my mind. I spoke with my sister about the rough outline of my idea and as we were talking about a post-apocalyptic environment she suggested that I root the environment in home. For example, when was the last time we saw a nuclear holocaust in Dundee? So I looked into Dundee landmarks and picked out a few I liked: The Discovery Ship The McManus Gallery Law Hill The New Waterfront I think it would be particularly interesting to take one of these locations and create a run down, overgrown version where my character could be seen exploring. I also looked up different concept arts that have used the overgrown, post-apocalyptic setting before: The Last of Us Fallout 3 Fallout 4 Horizon: Zero Dawn Metro 2033 As well as thinking about the environment for my short film, I decided to take a step back and return to the roots of the story. After today's class we discussed the use

After talking through our inspirations and ideas yesterday, I went away and tried to research some styles and techniques that I could use in my final project and I think I know what sort of direction I want to go in. I love the low poly style of 3D modelling and animation but I don't want my film to look like a badly animated video game. I know a lot of good low poly work relies of keeping a sense of realism in the animation and not losing the character through a lack of definition. It also occurred to me that lighting in extremely important as that can change the entire mood of a scene but I have no idea where to look for lighting ideas in a low poly stylised animation. Until I stumbled upon an artist called Jona Dinges . Jona's low poly work is absolutely stunning and maintains a sense of self and personality across his designs. In particular he has some wonderfully lit mini scenes and even a small cloth simulation. This piece below was modelled in Blender be

Today we were asked to bring in images, videos, anything that inspired what we wanted to achieve for our final project. So I spent the weekend going through some of my Pinterest boards as well as adding heavily to them. We've also been tasked with creating a character in 2D to then be created in 3D and it seems that this would be a good opportunity to create the character to be in my final project. After days of ideas swirling through my head I kept coming back to a post-apocalyptic, nuclear wasteland setting with a sole Wanderer making her way though the land. I wanted to focus on a theme of isolation and nature reclaiming the land. I found loads of images related to my ideas and I'll share a few below as well as link to my Pinterest boards for Post-Apocalypse and Inspiration . I've already mentioned before that music is a massive inspiration to me and there are a few tracks that come to mind when I think of post-apocalypse and luckily enough, I have a very