Bride of the Ugly Dinosaur

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.

Ugly Dinosaur Continued

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.

More Ugly Dinosaur

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: 

The Ugly Dinosaur

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. 

Project Pipeline: Dueling Wizards

My idea for a group project is to do a collaborative comic book about two wizards fighting over a magic wand. As they attempt to grab the wand from each other, they keep magically changing each other and the world around them. My idea was to have a different person draw each page - so, in other words, whenever one of the wizards casts a spell, the world of the comic book suddenly changes into another artist's style. 

I'd like to sketch out, in general, what happens in the comic book, so I think I should be the director of the project. I'm open to whoever would like to be Art Director and Head of Editorial. I thought this seemed like a good idea for a group project because people could focus on their own section of the project and incorporate their personal style into it, and yet it would still have an overall cohesive flow.

I would probably sketch out what's supposed to happen on each page rather simply, and then the other people in the group can draw the page in their own way. And they don't even have to be drawings - if you're a photography major, the wizards could become real people in wizard outfits on one of the pages. It all depends on what each person in the group would like to focus on. My initial sketches might  look something like this:

Of course, before I sketch out the actual story that would be used in the final version, I would want to talk to the other people in my group to find out what kind of artistic style they have so I could incorporate that into the comic book. Here's my Organizational Chart (we can have as many comic book artists as we need): 

And I also made out a timeline, although in a project like this, people will be working on their own sections of the project so it isn't easy to pin down what will happen when. Just so long as everybody gets their part done before the project is due.

Menagerie Project Final

At long last, I have completed my figures. Just to give you some context, I'm posting my original concepts for these designs along with the final products so that you can compare. Here is the Two-Headed Schwugglegluffin:

And then there's the Striped Whizzlepuss:

Here's the Beaked Blibberbuck:

And here we have the wise old Schwupp: 

And now the Mono-Glunk:

And lastly, there's the Vikkimilker:

Menagerie Part Three

I've decided to stay with the land fantasy creatures and go with the violet-orange-green palette. I updated my color swatches to reflect how much I intend to use each color:

I've also gone crazy designing creatures to make sure I make clay figures out of the very best ones. I drew about three pages worth of ideas, and I put check-marks next to ones I'm considering making:

I also tried to figure out where I'm going to photograph these creatures. Since the characters will be predominantly violet, I decided to emphasize either orange or green for the background and I took a few quick snapshots to get an idea of where I'm going to shoot. Green grassy areas seem to fit well with the theme of wild animals, although I threw in an orange for good measure: