Finished scenes and movie.

Heres the fully animated pat scene with the second scene where its more like an animatic.

This is where the dog wake up and slowly lifts his head before seeing the girl.

The dog anticipates downward before giving a shocked reaction where the ears fly upwards.

\The dog bounces rather than runs really to show he is more of a puppy as the girl is acting out as a vampire.

The dog plops down the stairs in a cute manner which i enjoyed creating. I needed to put her hand on the rail of the stairs as it would be unrealistic if she ran down the stairs without doing so as she is so small. This was a challenge though as here whole body moves the angle of the arm changes. I'm very pleased with the timing of this scene though.

And here we have the finished movie. My team members did a great job with the expressions and we worked really well together. We created a facebook group and posted everything we did on it to keep us all in the loop. We had a few disagreements but they were needed in the development of the film as they always ended up being resolved for the better of the film.the film stitched together very well, it doesn't jump too far and we don't get lost throughout it. The director, the one who drew up the story board, is very happy with the outcome of the project which is always good. I think my other team members could have put more frames into what they did as some of it cuts very abruptly. But it is an animatic and i have gone a little further than required on the frame rate. But overall im very happy with this project!

Problems...

As it so happens.... Notebook does not like me. The program zooms in on the background even though the resolution is the same. Then when i play the scene, it glitches and shifts the background to the left. I had no choice but to save each frame seperately.

I saved them all as targa formats for a sequence in after effects. What you see below is all the frames for the first fully animated bat scene.

This is what the frames looked like on their own.

Preparing the animation

Here are my workings out for the animation. For the bat i created lines of motion, where it was going to fly across the screen. And then give a sense of depth and perspective by creating a tube.

I use the tube i create to workout how far away the bat is getting from the screen. If I keep within this tube it will be very smooth and the bat wont get smaller or bigger suddenly by accident.

So here is the tube.

First sketches.

refining the sketches a bit and adding where the wings are as lines.

Clean up! This sceen is also going to be animated fully, 25 frames per second so its going to be really nice to open the film with.

Here im working out what the dog is doing.

I decided to draw up all the frames in photo shop on different layers to save time. This is what they look like all together!

This one was rather difficult as we seet him from the front, side. and behind. He turns 180 so that was fun to get all those angles right.

The landing scene for the girl, she does some big steps pretending to be scary and follows the dog round as he runs by. Timing these together will be tricky.

This is the reference my team mate made of the little girl. I put this in the scene when i was drawing so that i could work out the sizes.

All the frames together of the little girl and he hobbles down the big steps with little legs. Oh my goodness that was a challenge. Getting the legs to look right because of how big the steps are to her. She then pauses and does a big leap off the last step and pulls a scary pose at the end of it. Again im thinking about how a little girl would act.

7 & 8 weeks, production!

Heres a mood board i put together of all the things i need to refer to when i'm animating. The setting of the animation is in newyork or somewhere like it. Not a rich place either, very urban and working class. I love the idea of those big housing blocks with the zig zagg stair cases, they are so iconic and scream america! Fairly odd parents is a cartoon we were going to use as style inspiration but that didnt happen in the end. Some pictures of jack russle puppies and bats to refer to. I also looked at some videos of bats and puppies, to get an idea of how the move. Bats flap very fast so i will be sure to keep that in mind. And puppies tend to be clumsy with their movements, but very simplistic. For example, a larger more grown up dog would be bending its legs more, but puppies keep them straight in little steps. I have to keep in mind how little girls work too. They dont move the same or act the same as adults, they are more exaggerated and clumsy in their movements too.

This is the illustrator Patrick Vale. His thick and thing lines indicate how close an object is, and he outlines objects thicker too. His lines arent straight or even, and he colours outside the lines in broad strokes too. We all loved this as a group so i did a test for us all and we decided to go with it!

Here is the test i did for our style. We altered it afterwards and decided it should be a wee bit messier.

This is the sketch I had to work from, straight from the story board. I ended up flipping it as i felt it worked better.

Landing layout.

I drew up the houses again as i wasnt too fond of how the other one looked. layout is the same it just looks different.

This is the line version, i used thicker lines for the darker bits to indicated deep shadows.

This is the first stages of shading it. This adds detail and style to the whole thing.

I then added more grey and erased some to show the lighting from the windows and street lamps/

i LOVE the lighting effects i have managed to create with this style. Very pleased with this background.

The landing background drawn up!

The different stages in production to the establishing shot!

Here is a technique i used for all of the backgrounds. I erased some of the shadow in the direction the light was going like this to indicate it is infact the light which is causing it, and where it is coming from.

Badda big badda boom.

5-6 week, Complete change of plans!

So my story beard didnt get chosen out of the group i was put in which was a bit upsetting but ah well! This one looks cool and i love the animal characters in it so i have taken the position of designing those and animating them.

Here is my other team members story board.

So i took the liberty of highlighting and organizing which scenes we were all in charge of. I'm the red highlights and i alot did the two at the start which weren't highlighted.

These are the parts of the story board which i was incharge of.

Some sketches of head shaped and a real jack russel.

Final design of the head i wanted to make his really cute. Also i work out the body here, i want him to be a puppy so that means short and chubby.

\Expression sheet!

Body movement tests.

The bat development now. Was wondering what ears to use which would be most iconic of a bat, and the strange nose shape was a must. It just screams bat.

Here are some workings out of the anatomy and how he moves.

Batty reference sheet!

Puppy reference sheet.