Son Jonah and Dad Peter

Here is the design of the student (son) all coloured up. I was quite please with this design as I can defiantly see this guy working for the story as being the tall lazy animation student.

Below is the fisherman (Dad) he designed. Freddy wanted me to colour the Dad up so that he looked similar to the same way i'v coloured the son

I didn't want to make the two characters looked to similar as i wanted to keep there built completely the opposite (tall, skinny and small, stocky) but as i previously said by keeping the characteristics of the same shaped ears, nose and hair colour.

student development.

Freddy had a few drawings of the fisherman and also the merman which looked great. There was still the student left which for some reason I really wanted to design. Here below are some rough sketches I come up with.

I wasn't to happy with these designs until i come up with this rough drawing.

chosen character

I come up with this guy and decided to do side head turnaround shots to see if he would work. I showed Seb and Freddy and they said to tweak a few areas of his face so that his characteristics look similar to the fisherman. example bigger ears and square shaped nose.

Thumbnails

We decided to split up and take on some tasks we needed to complete such as nailing down the style which we are still having trouble with. Freddy decided to look more into the style, seb to do some render test of the sail on the boat and I to do the thumbnails of the story. Here below are the rough thumbnails of the story.

reenacted photos

we Decided that to help us plan out the story would to reenact what will be going on by taken snapshots of us performing the story out by getting on a boat. we thought this would be a great idea and also it would help us when it comes to the storyboards.

Add caption

Here above is the boat we took the shots on. we first had to find permission to do this by finding the guy that owns this. we had trouble finding him at first but in the end we were able to get permission. Here below are some example shots.

style

from our feedback we decided first things first is to nail down the style. we thought of looking in woodlane library through different illustration books would help us find a specific artist. we found a few interesting ones such as Nick Dewar, Istvan Banyai, Rodrigo Diaz Carrizo and many more. a few examples below of some artist

David Hughes

hughes has a wild style of stretchy necked and long faced characters which possibly could work well for the son as we are wanting him to be tall and lanky

Steve Brodner

Brodner's drawings have a lot of expressions going on, mostly in their faces which will be great for are animations as we are set to create a funny comedy.

Gerald Scarfe

I found Scarfe style to be unique in ways that would defiantly work. Big, fat and droopy this drawing of reginald maudling is the right type of style that we want for the merman

second pitch thoughts and feedback

on our second pitch it was defiantly a huge improvement from last weeks one. on this one we presented the story by bullets points. for each bullet point freddy created to rough thumbnails of the main shots that will be in the story. we then went on to show a few character designs i come up with. here is the feedback that was given to us.

• Huge improvement on delivery
• Story is far clearer
• Good idea to put images coupled with describing the story

they then discussed with us that we now need some more thumbnails and also the characters to have some different expressions going on. feedback below

• Want to see more concepts
• Thumbnails finished for next session
• Wow images
• Finalized character designs

first pitch thoughts and feedback

11/10/12
from our first pitch It was clear that we needed to work more harder for our second pitch. we took on board all the feedback they gave us and realised we need to improve by not showing slides of what we have been doing (taking photos of boats) rather to show what the story is and go through the characters etc. a few bullet points below from our feed back

• Story is still unclear.
• Keep the description of story concise
• More imagery helping to describe the story 
• Concepts
• More character designs
• Less about research
• Work on ending

character description

Dad

• heavy cornish accent
• gruff voice
• manly
• to the point/direct
• large hands and forearms
• wide chest
• hairy
• wears a hat
• woolly jumper
• water proof yellow fishing trousers
• smokes
• drinks

the fisherman drawings I did before was not what we were looking for so i come up with this new one.

this is the sort of build we want for him. I think i just need to change his red shirt to a navy jumper which most fishermen wear.

Son

• 6 foot tall
• scrawny
• hunch over
• lazy
• weak
• animation student
• sort tempered
• bit of a loner
• sarcastic (especially to his dad)
• typical teenager

with his description i then come up with this sketch

we are not sure if these two characters will be looking like this but this is a sort of example of what we want for are characters.

tutors feedback

4/10/12 

• why animation? 
• out of depth character ends up being the hero?
• Life of pi- film reference and book: strange things happening at sea.
• sea monster reference:
• moorgore- cornish monster
• crypto zooligy 
• Keep referencing 

character design

I come up with a few characters sketches by looking at the mac and cheese animation for reference to get that style we wanted.

I felt this character below was not in what we wanted because I realised his built is not in proportion of what we want for our large hard working fishing. I felt his body was to slouchy and his characteristics like his fore arms were to small.

Production Schedule

here is a production schedule that hopefully it will be manageable. we would have liked some of the areas to be a week shorter, but we agreed that some of the section would be more time consuming. 

st.ives inspiration

seb and freddy went across to penzance to get some photos of more boats and more recordings of fisherman. I thought that i would travel down to st ives to explore the small harbour front as i find st ives to be one of the most famous fishing towns around cornwall.
I come across many interesting objects such as anchors, fishing barrels and fishing nets

when coming to look off the pier and walking down to the beach i found every single boat was a fishing boat. full of bright colourful boats which were great for thinking of more ideas.

I thought it would be a good idea to pull my trousers up and get into the sea so i could jump into the boats and get the fell of what it's like to be in those cold wet crooked boats.

I stumbled across one specific boat which really interest me with it's inflatable footballs used as boat boise.

Also the fisherman i interviewed.

style for the project

for the style we have been looking into particular animations such as team fortress which has that sort of bulky characteristics to the characters.

Also we come across the animation mac and cheese which again has the smae sort of style to team fortress.

3rd year project begins

My Team consists of me freddy and seb. through the summer me and freddy brainstormed a few ideas but we didn't decide on anything yet as seb was back in norway for the summer.

the story so far we come up with is The story is about a father and son out at sea, on a trip to catch fish but more importantly reform a bond that had been torn after the parents split. The story explores the growing divide between generations as technology and popular culture draw the younger generation away from continuing family tradition.
The two characters struggle to get along, both with contrasting personalities and lifestyles.
Throughout the story, the father and captain of the boat tests his son and teaches him to be honest and hard working by threatening to sacrifice him to 'The Sea Beast'.. at first the student does not listen to his dad, claiming that the sea beast is just a made up stupid thing, but at night time suspicious noises and shadows make him become paranoid and he starts to hear strange things and becomes  nervous and paranoid to the point of breaking down. eventually the captain reveals that all the things that initially scared the student are normal and that the sea beast is just a joke to get him to do work... The student so re leaved to hear that it was a joke forgives his father but a slow zoom out of the boat reveals a large dark figure underneath the boat... they are not alone!
with this story we had come up with we thought by heading down Penryn harbour front and the boat yard would help us get the feel on the life of what it's like down those parts of cornwall.

we also wanted some sound recordings of true fisherman that have spent most of the life down the harbour for some inspiration. we managed to interview some great people that gave us a good ideas now on what we want to produce for the story. whilst down the boat yard i managed to record some sounds of the waves crashing around.

from penryn we walked down into falmouth harbour front where we come across the pier infront of the chainlocker pub which was full of fishing boats that were ideal.