An interesting random photograph. © 2005 Jonathan Hey - www.palojono.com

Carriage interior geometry

The second high vantage point could make a more interesting composition for scene 3.

Finished Inbetweens - Scene One!

I forgot how long clean-up and inbetweens take. It was very naive to assume that I could do it in a day. Nonetheless, here we have finished inbetweened clean-up!

The great thing about doing this whole scene myself was it's taught me a lot about my process and how I work, so I can easier relay this to my wonderful clean-up artists/inbetweeners from now on. Ie. Having done it mysef, I feel in a better position to be able to explain what I want from the crack team we've assembled. It's given me confidence. :)

So Scene 1 Duke, all done. It's now going to be blown up to a larger scale and retraced to enhance the line quality before we start manipulating it for the reflection/jewel effect. In that process the sash and medals will also be added -all courtesy of the wonderful Lyndsy. :D Lyndsy, I love you. You're a star.

Cracking on with another scene now, yaaaaay!

Gear system

I know this might look like an enormous waste of time, but I reckon it'll help when it comes to rigging the pistons; they are on screen for at least 2 or 3 seconds after all.

Behold! A finished linetest!

Kind of.

This is the cleaned-up keyframes for Scene One, in which the Duke admires his reflection in the diamond. So fingers crossed and I'll have this inbetweened for Monday/Tuesday, which means our first 2D scene in the bag. Yay!

Quite happy with how it's turned out, in the end, having started from scratch this week. It's been good to be back in the studio. Special thanks to Brian Lindsay for helping me out with the tricksy moustache. :)

Exterior Geometry

The Flying Duchess engine and royal carriage.
Still missing some wheels and the drive mechanism.

Carriage interior geometry in progress

The beginings of the first carriage interior. I'm finding that the overall shape of the orthographic designs are needing much tweeking once seen in 3D.

Bird animation tutorial by Brendan Body

What are the chances? Brendan Body, who worked as a lead animator on Legend of the Guardians (released here on the 15th), has just posted this in-depth tutorial with many tips and observations on bird flight. Couldn't be more useful when it comes to animating our falcon.

Jewel designs

Three posible design routes for the jewel. I've tried to use bird and cage symbols wherever posible. Your comments please!

Environment paintings

The fish-eye panorama was made for panning in the animatic. I prefer these slightly more subdued colours to some of the earlier images.