Inspiration, Sketches and Ideas

Okay so in my previous post I've revealed the short story for the project so if u haven't read it yet; go for it. For the style of this animation i think we can do something very stylish like this one in term of design:

"Will" by Eusong Lee

 A very emotional piece... The point is go to your loved ones asap, give them bear hugs and tell them "I love you" while you still can. JUST DO IT !

Next, i think for Dude's adventure part, we can do it like a 2D platformer with super cool stage design like

Patapon

or

Machinarium

If u haven't checked out Machinarium, u really are missing out a masterclass game. My friend showed me the game last week and i have been playing it since. I'm a sucker for those clever puzzles. Plus, the artworks are just amazing !

Also if you go back to my very first post back in October, you can find the link to the "How to train your dragon" episode. Pay attention to the cartoon style part ( Gobber's memory ). I love that style ! 

I did some sketches - head studies plus extreme poses right here of the two best friends. The skinny long hair one is Dude. Check them out:

Alright ! For my next post, i will be working on designing bands in the tournament that Dude has to face. Challenge Accepted !!!

Until then and HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY !!!
   

Winter Break 2012 Week 1 Updates

Hi guys,

Hope u all did well in the finals. I survived and so here I am again ready to keep this project rolling. This time I will finally give you the plots for the short story we will be working on. Basically it's like this:

Dude and Roomie are two best bros ("Bromance" <-- Dare you to click haha XD !!!). Dude is the lead guitar for a rock band while Roomie is just an average roommate who loves rock.
One day Roomie found a flyer about the "Battle of Bands" on Dude's table and asked Dude what is it all about.      
Dude then told Roomie about his epic adventure to the Battle of Bands  held at the Palace of Rock where he battled the weirdest/ fiercest bands to obtain the Legendary Thor Guitar  (or whatever the heck that is !!! )
 According to Dude, the final boss was so hellishly hard, he put Bioshock's Fontaine to shame. Dude tried his best but all he could remember was his butt being kicked pretty hard and a black out at the end. 
Dude then told Roomie  that even though he didn't make it through; he learned that real rock is all about the rocker's heart, not the instrument. Roomie was so deeply touched he told Dude: "Damn, that's beauuutiful man T.T !!!". But Dude then said: "Just kidding man ! I got it !" and pulled the legendary guitar out of nowhere. The instrument brimming with special effects (0o0)!

End of story !

Up next shall be the inspiration for the design/style of the animation. 

Week 7 Planning

This week, let have one last meeting before we get locked down working on our finals. Let's go for 2pm tomorrow in art 206 like usual. We will review the brand new short story we will be working on and jump right into character design. A lot of you probably will be working on your finals in the art building tomorrow anyway so if you can, drop in. 
 See you there !

Week 6 Updates

So for week 6, we came up with a brand new short story to work on. We were brainstorming for a good while without anything solid except our heads ready to explode. BUT, as we were about to go home empty-handed, our brilliant  Ross Carlisle caught on fire with one of the crazy wild stories I collected from my friends and developed it into a fine story. I think it's original, weird, explosive and funny as hell. Since this is mainly Ross' idea, I will leave the story posting to him. He has been extremely busy but hopefully he will get the story up soon. Or if you're curious, just go to the meeting tomorrow and we will pitch it on the spot. Btw, this is a short story for a 3- 4 min short, we should be able to get it done.     

I'm very excited to start working on this during winter break. Can't wait !

Siegfried Animated Trailer

I kinda like this art style!

Week 6 Planning

S'up gang !

This week let have another art jam. Just come have fun and hang out after a tough week ( especially those who are in Inga class ). We will be doing it this time at 2pm Sunday in ART206 because everyone is going to "Rise of The Guardian" on Saturday.

See you there !

Ron's Sketches

I really like our first art jam !

Maybe we're gonna do another one this week. Anyway, here are some of my sketches. And thank you Julio for being so active with the group ! U even beat me on posting the sketches :D

Hope u like them ! Will have more for ya soon !

Later

More sketches

Here are some more sketches, ideas for fish people, rebel force recruits  and people taken prisoners and forced to slave labor.

Week 5 Planning

Yo all,

We will be meeting this Saturday 10am in Art 206. We will take a break from editing the story. Instead, we will be sketching and designing stuffs. I have done a bunch of sketches that I will bring in and gonna do some more at the meeting. So please come with your best arsenal of art supply so we can kick some illustration butts !!!

See u there !

   

Week 4 Updates

Hey guys,

Last week we went over the new version of the story and added details to the intro. We also made some key changes to the story. Basically, the resistance group will be more complicated than just a group of humans fighting for humanity. Although some of them still hold on to the original cause of the resistance, their leader and commanding officers are extremists. They have built up hatred toward the fish to the level that they just want to kill fishes for the fun of it; saving humanity is not their priority anymore. Witnesses innocent fishes being murdered and seeing how fishes react just like humans when they lose their family members; Roka decided to find a way to stop fishes and the resistance from fighting and try to reconcile the conflict between the two sides.
I think this addition will make the story more interesting. Also, it would make the reconciliation between human and fish less awkward and forcing like in the summary last week. Both sides need to go through a process of learning before they decide to come together; not immediately after one side have lost the battle. That's just weird ! Imagine someone comes to my house, blasts my door open with a shotgun and then blasts my roommates and then asks me if I want to be friend forever. ???

So, what we have so far is like this:

• 200 years ago, there's an ambitious scientist who wanted to rule over mankind. He created a mighty army of sea creatures and led them to invade the human world.
• Succeeded, he became the Emperor of his new Aqua Empire where sea creatures are the rulers and humans are servants.  
• In present time, we start in a village of humans that escaped the invasion by finding a land that is hidden from the Aqua Empire. Here in this village live our protagonist, Roka and his sister, Fey.
• One day, Roka flies with his glider hovering over the town. He crashes and goes unconcious.
• He wakes up being tended to by a resistance group who also survived the invasion and have been fighting the Empire for years.
• The resistance follows Roka back to his village because the resistance leader wants to convince the village to join force. The villagers refuse the request because they want to live in peace. 
• In the middle of the conversation, the fish army ambushes the village. The resistance retreats. Some of the villagers followed the resistance to escape, others captured or killed by the fishes. Among the dead were Roka's parents and his sis sister, Fey, was captured.
• Roka joins the resistance to find his sister and later on, battles the Empire for humans' freedom.
• Throughout the journey, Roka turns disgusted with the meaningless violence of the resistance. He decides to come up with a plan to stop both sides from fighting.
• Roka rescued the resistance leader's daughter from the fish king. Also, one of the resistance member turns out to be the fish king's lost son who carries out his mom's wish to guide humans to dethrone his dad and bring human and fish together.
•  With the prince's help, Roka and his friends unite to defeat the fish king.
•  The prince takes over the throne, humans and fishes then live together.

Okay, that's pretty much all we discuss story wise last week except the ending was created by me just now. We also decided to choose Victorian 18- 19th century to be the style of the movie-greatest example: Final Fantasy 9. Now that we have nailed all that down, we can start sketching and designing stuffs during the next meeting ( OH YEAH XD !!!! DRAW DRAW DRAW !!!!)

Kk,

See you all Saturday ! 


            

More Sketches

Here are some more quick sketches done during the meeting

Week 4 Planning

Hi gang,

Sorry I haven't been that active this week because I was super busy with submitting my portfolio for the AI review. However, I got it through safe and sound last night. So I'm back to business !
For this week, most of us probably will be busy with Steve Hickner this Saturday; thus, let run our meeting on Sunday 2pm like last week. Then from next week on, hope we can run it on Saturday 10am period.

So like I said in my last post, even though we got a summary for a simplified story based of my original; I'm afraid that it's getting too cliche. However, I still want to see how it would develop. Therefore,  on Sunday we will try and built the story up in this new direction and see how it goes. If things go wrong, we can always revert things back to the original as I personally believe it's not that bad. We just did not connect the dots and took the shortcut by simplifying things way too much.


Alright, that's all for this post. Will work on some sketches now.
See you Sunday !

PS: Again, good luck to the brave souls who submitted their portfolio this semester ! Best wishes guys and gals !

Thum Thketcheth

So like, here's some of the sketches I did. I can't draw children for the life of me. xP

Week 3 Updates

S'up everybody,

Last week we just had so far the best meeting. A lot of new members showed up with great enthusiasm( Thank you Wendy, Matt and Eugene ! ) and everyone was doing excelent sketches ( Thank you Ross, Eric, Arron and Ron). I'm so HAPPY !!! We finally arrived at an acceptable summary for our story. This is almost a brand new story based off ideas from the original after the team put all sort off crazy ideas on the table. So here is the REAL summary for it, oh yeahhhh :

• 200 years ago, there's an ambitious scientist who wanted to rule over mankind. He created a mighty army of sea creature and led them to invade the human world.
• Succeeded, he became the Emperor of his new Aqua Empire where sea creatures are the rulers and humans are servants.  
• In present time, we start in a village of humans that escaped the invasion by finding a land that is hidden from the Aqua Empire. Here in this village live our protagonist, Roka and his sister, Fey.
• One day, Roka flies with his glider hovering over the town. He crashes and goes unconcious.
• He wakes up being tended to by a resistance group who also survived the invasion and have been fighting the Empire for years.
• Roka returns to his village and find out it had been taken over by the Empire. Everyone is dead and Fey is gone.  
• Roka joins the resistance to find his sister and later on, battles the Empire for humans' freedom.
• Roka and the resistance emerge victorious over the Emperial army and imprison the Emperor.
• Fish and humans then live together.
• The message: Still working on how to phrase it properly. But so far we have : love, unity, freedom and ...America ?     

Well, let say i like how clear and open-ended the layout of the story is . However, I feel that it's a little predictable and cliche. I'm not denying that it has tremendous potential for the design and animation; but storytelling wise, I prefer a story with more twists and anticipation factor. The only thing that I really like right now is THE RESISTANCE. That's a solid idea. So let develop this summary more on our next meeting and see how it turns out.

Alright guys that's all for this post. Later !!!

Meeting Time Change

Hi gang,

The meeting has been moved to Sunday 2pm in ART 206 instead of Saturday 10am.
Come join us !

Random #$%@

If you haven't seen it already ...

batman trying to vanish... badly !!!

 LAUGH IT UP !!!

3rd Week Planning

Alright gang,

For this coming meeting on Sunday 2pm in Art 206, we will continue working on the story and produce more sketches/illustration. I will bring in projector and laptop to work with just like last week. This week let try and nail some of the key points like the level of technology and style for the film.

See ya there !

Ron    

Week 2 Updates

Yo all,

It's time for our weekly post !
Last week meeting was awesome again thanks to everyone. I would like to apologize for that so called summary that so freaking huge I don't even wanna read it. So, just read it to have a general ideas of what this film will be about; however, we are reconstructing that story vigorously bit by bit and making dramatic changes, cut, additions,..etc to make it better. Last week we worked on the beginning of the film and it went really well. At this rate, in two month from now on, the story will be really good. I will post a "real" summary" of  the refined  story when we finish.

We also did a bunch of sketches for some scenes and characters. These are mine for some of the creatures and the main character. Think the creatures are a little bit too cute, will intensify them later. Will do some location studies for the film soon. Oh, we're thinking of changing the protagonist name to Roka btw. Let us know what you think. Oh and don't forget to check out Aaron awesome color sketch and Julio kick ass sketches down below too.

Later !!!

PS: GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE INCLUDING MYSELF WITH OUR BFA PORTFOLIO !
       FIRE IT UP !