Hey, guys! I've been working more on the Lizzie Schwartz comic book; mostly I've been designing the characters, but I've been putting a lot of thought into where the story is headed as well. First of all, I made some character sketches for the three lead characters. I drew Lizzie out in a few different poses. I wanted to make sure to keep Lizzie's face and body elastic - sometimes cartoonists fall into the trap of making a character so cute that they can't really be expressive (sort of a Hello Kitty syndrome) and I wanted to avoid that. So here's what I came up with:
And then I drew some poses for Sigmund and Felipe - obviously, Sigmund is the uptight, angry one, whereas Felipe is more laid-back, like a hippie:
And then I designed and colored the other major characters. King Giffon rules the Land of No Laughter, the Schwinkle-Bird sends messages to the king to detect if there is any humor going on in the kingdom, Detective Doolick questions our three leads to see if they are at all humorous, the Grand Old Wizard Clamboozler has a dark crystal that can suck up comedy and leave a person completely serious and the Gluzzump is King Giffon's gelatinous pet:
And lastly, here is a chart I made for the coming weeks:
The project I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks is a comic book. If you recall, I pitched for a comic book for the group project, and I've been sort of itching to do one since. This particular comic book will be one in a series featuring some characters I've been tossing around in my sketchbooks for a while.
The series is called The Curious Dreams of Lizzie Schwartz, and it's all about a seven-year-old girl who has strange adventures in her head alongside her teddy bear, Sigmund, and her pillow, Felipe.
There isn't a continuing story in the series; the characters will enter a different universe in each book, sort of like how the original Star Trek TV show had the same cast of characters, but each episode was a self-contained journey to a new world. And these dream worlds will usually relate to something going on in Lizzie's life. So, for instance, the comic book might start off with Lizzie feeling insecure about always having the wrong answer in school, and then she has a dream of Opposite World, where everything that's wrong in the real world is considered right.
In the comic book I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks, no one understands or pays attention to Lizzie's jokes, and she has a dream about a land in which comedy and laughter is strictly forbidden and punishable by beheading. Here's the original sketchbook page where I came up with the idea:
As far as target dates, on November 20th, I'll have character designs and story sketches. On November 27th, I should have the story written out. On December 4th, I should be well under way with penciling in the comic book, and on December 11th, it should be inked in.
Hopefully, this comic book will feel like its own thing, but a few inspirations going in are George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, Walt Kelly's Pogo, Carl Barks' Donald Duck comic books and anything by Milt Gross.
Hey, all! This week I primarily did clean-up and color on the animation that I posted last week. The animation is finished now, and we're moving in to putting it all together.
The backgrounds here are by Kaleb Rice:
UPDATE: Here is the finished film. I present to you, The Ugly Dinosaur. Nice job, Lauren & Jinny!
Production is well underway for The Ugly Dinosaur, and this week I've been doing rough animation for Oscar in scene #5 (the final scene). I did a whole bunch of shots based on key frames given to me by Laura Mansfield.
This is Oscar catching a glimpse of Dot's family being attacked. The first drawing is Laura's, the rest are mine. (That's the case with most of these sequences.)
Here's Oscar reacting to the attack. I think this scene turned out pretty well - he looks genuinely surprised. It's funny how exaggerated the drawings seemed while I was doing them, but when you watch the animation, it looks pretty natural. I think that's an important aspect of animation - you don't immediately think of a character like Grumpy from Snow White as being extremely cartoony and over-the-top like a Tex Avery character, but if you pay close attention, animator Bill Tytla drew some pretty extreme poses for the character. He really took full advantage of animation's strengths in translating personality without being obvious about it.
Here's Oscar going to rescue Dot's family. I added the hesitation since I thought that made Oscar a more sympathetic character.
This is Oscar running behind some rocks.
More running.
This is Oscar peeking out from behind a rock. I always try to keep the animation funny even if the action is fairly straightforward.
This is Oscar's look of happiness as Dot runs over to him. It looks pretty sparse now, but it will play better when the animation of Dot is put in, obviously.
A different angle on Oscar reacting to Dot.
I can't take much credit for this one - this is Laura's drawing, I just animated the pupils moving back and forth.
Dot and her brothers are embracing Oscar here, but he still is insecure about his jaw. Hopefully his insecurity comes through in the animation.
This is another example of a sequence that I thought was really outrageous while I was drawing it and would probably have to be downgraded, but it actually works pretty well.
Oscar is supposed to be happy here because Dot's brothers are finally accepting him. Laura did the first and last drawings here:
This is Oscar's look of jubilation, with his deformed jaw hanging open. I thought it looked too static to just have his mouth open while the rest of him stayed completely still, so I widened his eyes, too.
This last scene I'm not as crazy about. Oscar is supposed to be reacting to Dot nudging up against him, but I think it's too mechanical. I'm not sure - maybe I'll redo it at some point.
Hello again! Busy week, but I've been making some headway with the Ugly Dinosaur project. First of all, I finalized the colors of the lead characters, based on the color scripts by Kaleb Rice:
Beyond that, I've been working on the rough animation of Oscar in scene 3, when Oscar meets Dot's family. This is a bit of animation that I made of Oscar trailing behind Dot, although I'm not sure if it will be used in the finished film. I decided to have him awkwardly wobble rather than do a more traditional walk cycle because he's still pretty young and wouldn't quite have his "sea legs" yet, so to speak:
This is a brief reaction shot from Oscar when he sees Dot's brothers. This was a fairly easy shot to animate, and I think it came out okay:
This bit, when Oscar's jaw hangs open, is - in my opinion - the most successful piece of animation I've done for this project. I tried to to really exaggerate the movement and add in some follow-through and I think it came off pretty well:
And, last, here's a far-off shot of Oscar as the brothers circle him. This one, again, might have to be revised, since I received some feedback from Jinny and Laura that they wanted this scene to be an overhead shot. See what you think:
I'm currently working on a few different bits of animation to finish out scene three. I will hopefully finish them up soon and have them posted to the blog soon.
I'm still doing pre-production on The Ugly Dinosaur, and it's been a busy week. First off, I drew up model sheets for all of the characters in the short. I gave Jinny and Laura a few character sketches last week, and they gave me some notes on how to improve the designs. Here's what I finally came up with:
I also revised the storyboards I posted last week. The leaf in the short was changed to a fern, and the pond was changed to a dinosaur's footprint with water in it, so I altered a few panels to accommodate those changes:
And, lastly, I drew some thumbnails for scene three to help out the animators. The thumbnails are based on a scene boarded by Michelle Rakar:
Hey, guys! I'm currently working on a project with some fellow CCAD students, The Ugly Dinosaur. It's going to be an animated film, directed by the very talented Jinny Hinkle and Laura Mansfield, and the short itself has its own production blog (http://theuglydinosaur.blogspot.com/). I've been named Head of Visual Development, although I'm also working on storyboards and animation.
So over the weekend I drew up some character sketches, based on some designs Jinny and Laura already came up with. This is Oscar, the lead character of the short, who is a Torvosaurus with a jaw problem:
And this is Dot, the Stegosaurus:
I also drew a few sketches of Dot's brothers, who aren't too fond of Oscar:
And, lastly, the adult Torvosauruses, who chase after Oscar and almost kill Dot and her family:
I also drew up some thumbnails for two different scenes in the short. This is an early scene where Oscar hatches, tries to eat a leaf and runs into Dot:
And here's a scene later in the short, when Oscar runs into the Torvosauruses:
These designs and thumbnails may go through drastic changes before the final film, but here's where we are so far.
