I would be chilling out right now, but then I took an arrow to the knee...

Ah yes... Christmas holidays, eating, sleeping and playing Skyrim. NOPE. Escuridao Decente has been picked which was a big suprise, but hey. Challenge accepted.

So the plan is to get things going. I really want to be ready and confident to go along with this so alot needs to be done before new year term starts. The style needs to be perfected and alot of time and planning needs to go into the layouts and timing. Also the animatic needs a long and carful recut. I have real concerns for this project as the reason i did it as a 10 minute piece was to get all my ideas in the animatic. However after doing it and telling everyone it was 10 minutes everyone was like "Woah... that's way too long". Which I knew, but after people had watched it the 10 minutes were seen as vital in telling the story and setting the mood. So the real challenge here is to sustain the overall atmosphere and feel but cutting it down to 4-5mins.

Heres the animatic. I will be uploading a higher quality one when the newer version is done.



And here is the production bible.

Escuridao Decente Production Bible

ESCURIDAO DECENTE

Well I haven't really talked about the idea on the blog, so i think its properly best to do so in case some people don't get the idea.

Well in simple terms its about an old man and his dog searching for memories out at sea. And within the animation he confronts a build up of all the dark and bad memories which he had forgotten or lost over the life he has had. I will gladly tell you the story in detain if you ask since its pretty complicated to write down. But i will hopefully have a fully written piece done if it gets chosen


Here is the concept work I produced for the pitch.









i decided to do the concept work in Photoshop and give it a painted feel instead of the Waltz with Bashir style. The main reason for this was time. Even though the Waltz with Bashir style looks simple i had a hard time wrapping my head around the lighting and the simplicity. I watched the film every hour of everyday to get lighting and colour use drummed into my skull. It really helped to understand the value of a shot how lighting and colour can provide the mood and feeling of a certain scene of picture. Another reason why I didn't use the style was that I wasn't too familiar with it and if i wanted first impressions to be good, i thought it was best to present my idea in the best medium at my disposal.

Sketches and early concepts

Here are some really early sketches of the old man. i wanted him to look interesting and believable as a character. At the bottom i have a early test of the Waltz with Bashir style. It wasn't working in the way I would think and was taking way to long to produce. If my project does get picked i will spend some time trying to perfect the style or find one a lot more suitable.

I could only scan in what my a4 sketches since my scanner isn't big enough. I may go into uni and use the scanner to upload the others.

Photoshop practice

Just did some quick doodles in Photoshop, since I haven't used it since the negotiated brief. Each one about an hour to and hour and half tops.
Time to do some concept art :D

Dog concept designs

Just some quick designs for the dog. Needs to be translated into the style.

doodles

sketches and shizzle, when i was bored that i havnt posted

Character Designs

Here are just a few play arounds i did to find what i was looking for. I am currently developing finishing the character at the moment and i will have it uploaded later.

Practice

I did a few run cycles over the summer and this one seems the better of the lot. Its not finished though since it needs tweaking and some of the movements are a bit out. But i am happy with it so far.

Old work

Heres some tests and some concepts i did before i changed my idea. But i havnt changed the style so thats a good thing



I might go back into these to finish if i have time. Good for pratice

Back in Uni

Alrighty then... back in uni and ready to get crackin. Well its already been a week and i havnt even blogged anything. During summer I was very interested with the Angolan/Portuguese war, back in the 60/70's, and i had known my grandaddy was in the war but he never spoke about it, well i could never understand him so yeah, nevermind.



Well i really liked to backdrop of the war and what happened so i decided for my major project to do someting about the war. So i before actually sketchingi decided the style, because if i decided now about a style which could be easily copied to other people, it would make it easier for other people to work on the project and make everything look the same. Ive always loved graphic novels and how the strong combination of pure black and colour and be very effective and nice to look at. I had also been a great fan of Waltz with Bashir, so the style of this was my platform to relate to.

I began sketching way too much about soliders, and if you notice 90% are faces, i don't know why but ever since i spent 2 months drawing faces non stop ive naturally been drawn to keep drawing them over and over..























Just an conecept of mine when i was watching a documentry on alternative WW2 endings






Watched the Dollars collection last night :D

When the summer ended i had realized i had sketched nothing of interest or progression to the idea, so i sat down and decided to rethink my idea. I loved the backdrop but i needed a vehicle to push the story forward..

So i came up with the idea of a fisherman who lives on a small boat at sea with his dog. I didn't want to drop the whole Portuguese aspect of the idea so its going have Portuguese themed surroundings on the boat and even the boat itself if that is the case. Well since hes been out on this boat hes gathered alot of thrinkets throughout the years and within these trinkets contain memories he lost throughout his life. Im not sure what the trinkets will be but thats for further planning. One evening whilst having chilling with his dog he gets a tug on the rope, and pulls in what he caught. To his surprise its another trinket, however this one has a strange aura surrounding it. Once touched it unleashes his deepest and darkest mermories which had been buried long ago. This will include his involvment in Angola and the horrors he witnesses aswell as his wife who had passed many years ago. He eventually goes insane from the overwelming of all these memories and carnt take it no more.



Im not sure how to end this though.. Theres many ways it could that i have thought of but i think i need to have a chat with Derek :)