2nd Animatic 24/11/09

This is the 2nd animatic, with changes and CGI background slowly being put into place.



Notes:
- Need to rethink camera angles, far too samey
- Need to think about pacing, seems abit slow and drags abit
- Need to finish the animatic fully, still lacks animation, which means it's losing readability, will Flash animate.
- Consider whether a soundtrack is needed or can the tv be playing constantly in the background. Maybe have the commentator in the background, commentating on the football match, which also commentates on the actual happennings between the Egg and Axl.

1st Animatic 11/11/2009

This is the first animatic:




After showing this in rushes, things that I noted to change were:
- To make the Egg gag shorter, people laughed at the initial serving the egg, a fried egg, so no need to play it out any longer.
- Need to emphasise on his gut wrenching feeling, it doesn't show as well
- Emphasise the channel changing, the point where Axl finally flips
- Have better music

Character Design

I'm thinking of using a thin lanky character, because it'd be easier to animate in 3Ds Max, compared to the fiddliness of a large bulky character. Having long limbs would make movement alot easier and more pronounced in the animation. I think this will be a good effect as there is little dialogue in my film, concentrating more on body language. Hopefully having large eyes, heavy pronounced use of eyebrows and easily exaggerated long gangly limbs shall help conveying the message across to the audience.

Characters such as Basil Fawlty come into mind; his exaggerated, at times manic, body movements when he is irrate stand out in particular. He also has some pretty impressive facial features which may bear some influence.



Of course, my character isn't going to be human. This is to detract from reality in a way and as the character is going to be a generic lizard creature, retain a cartoony feel. This is also keeping to good old Tom and Jerry and Droopy Dog-esque characters; animals with human qualities. Anthropomorphism at it's best.


Here is a rough character design sheet showing front, side and 3/4 view as well as some expressions.

From this, I modelled the character out of plastercine, to get an idea of proportions and a physical form to refer to whilst modelling the character on Max. Here are some photos:

Using these as a guide, I have started to model my character, the plan is to spend time on modelling Axl then using the finished mesh, scaling it down and using it for the Baby. The baby is essentially Axl's mesh, scaled down and given some baby fat using abit of mesh alterations. Here's what I have so far :

Axl:

Baby:

Latest Storyboards

Here's the 3rd set of storyboards:

More Inspriation Stuff

I found this animation called "The Cat Came Back" by Cordell Barker (1988), it has a similar story to that of mine. Thought a post on here of it would be merited, also, there's not much video footage influence posted here either yet. So here's the first.



Here's an example of Droopy. You just can't escape him...

VISUALS

This is a collection of visuals I collected of things I thought maybe helpful. These include facial expressions, cgi reptiles and room layouts.

Storyboards!

Right, so here's the first go at the story boards. This one is based from the initial idea.



These helped me with seeing how the story was going to read. The camera angles and most the shots needed to be editted due to the horizon line being very high, giving it a voyueristic view; a detached feeling, so the audience wouldn't feel part of it. So more close ups and lower horizons needed.
The Egg coming through the window idea jarred with Rob and Johnny. So after talking to them about it, it needs changing. I've decided to go for the Droppy-esque "No matter where you put him, he'll always come back" idea. Now back to the drawing board!

Here's the 2nd go, with more interesting shots and alot more boards...



After putting these into Premier, in the 3 minutes, some of it feels too rushed with too many shots for a particular scene. So going to have to go through and edit out the unecessary frames. Also there doesn't seem to be enough emphasis on the importance of the can tower to the character and now seems out of place. Instead, I'm going to have the Egg bounce off the walls, tables and sofa after being dropkicked and hit the TV instead, as there is quite abit of emphasis of Axl trying to watch the match; it flows better that way, so just a couple more shots to make it clearer. That way it can be based in one room as well, saving time of modelling an outdoors set. So the stacking shots can be taken out, but I'm keeping the can opening shots as they can be a useful way to transition between shots/scenes. 3rd (and hopefully final) storyboards to be up soon, following the script I posted before post.

Initial Character Doodles

Not much, but here's a couple of pages of quick doodles for the main character.
Final character sheet to come soon.