Continued

Hey hey hey...

Hey kids. Long time no speak, but 'The Flying Duchess' has officially started production; a pretty good reason for our lack of updates.

First deadline as such is our peer review monday, for which we're re-vamping the animatic. We've moved a couple of scenes around, extended a few, made a few a lot more difficult/challenging (yes I'm looking at you Kieran) and had a closer look at sound. Hopefully it's a marked improvement.

I've been working on starting the 2D animation. Here's a couple of veeeery rough tests for Scene One, where the Duke is admiring his own reflection in the diamond. It's already proved to be very challenging, with forshortening and facial animation... I've done a separate test just to figure out hand movements at the beginning. Nothing finalised, just thought I'd post an update on how we're getting on.

Turn-around trace test

Emily sketches

Hello - please accept my humble offering. A few sketches I did of Emily. I didn't want to put all of them up, so here are my favourites. She's not as on-model as I would've liked, and probably out of character in a few, but I hope to fix that soon. I was really just wanting to get used to drawing her, but please, critique to your hearts content!

Been watching a lot of period dramas and animation with princesses to try to get an idea of how her dress might work.

Are there any specific kind of drawings you're wanting me to do?

Train design coloured

Les Cites Obscures

Been looking over the exquisite 'Les Cites Obscures' graphic novels by the Belgian comics artist François Schuiten and writer Benoît Peeters- kindly lent by Reinhard. I love the distorted sense of scale and subtle drawing style. Hopefully we can lend these sketchy type textures to our film to help the 2D feel.

Personal show reel

For the amount of time I spend making websites I rarely have time to update my own. Finally got to it over the weekend and the results are at- www.kb3d.co.uk

Including a new personal show reel -

Full train designs

Here are designs for each of the carriages and the locomotive with bells and whistles added. No really, bells and whistles. The middle carriage will be duplicated, probably three times to lengthen the train. Have made the rear carriage a little vault like as if it is for transporting the dukes treasures- I felt this ties it together visually. Also the railings at both ends leave a nice gap for Edward to leap away from the Duke during the chase.

I will try some colour in these drawings next.

A couple videos of interest

Firstly "On Melanchony Hill" video was released earlier in the week. I gotta love the gorillaz for the way they combine every kind of component, live action, 2D and 3D animation, side by side in very cinematic scenes. Personally I find the overall visual result a complete mess but stunning none the less. And what a tune.
On Melanchony Hill - YouTube


Also "The Lighthouse Keeper" is the Gobelins film which won best graduation film at Annecy 2010. I am fascinated by the use of particle effects which adds a lot to the atmosphere of the piece - something to look into.

Animatic v.2.2