Narrative: Origami Crane idea

In our rough script we have one of our characters trying to get the attention of his colleague in various ways and in the end makes and origami crane, it drifts over to her and ultimately he finally gets her attention.

I had a quick thought in regards to the whole origami crane sequence for our story. There's a legend about making 1000 origami cranes to make your wish come true (Senbazuru), so instead if it being one crane and getting picked up by a draft, maybe we could have origami cranes trickling down the conveyor belt to the girl? (We obviously won't do a thousand since that's a lot of work to do, but it would get the idea across?)

Here's a rough sketch of what I mean, and this would also make her finally look at the other character after all of his attempts?

Fantastic Voyage: Fern Storyboard

The transitions between each stage will rely on the "morph". The animatic will show this process a lot clearer.

From Script to Screen: Storyboard Style

Deciding on how I want each of my panels to look. Simple lineart was too boring and the greyscale shading gave it a bit more life, but I'm leaning towards the sepia-like textured shading at the end, likehow I've been doing the character concepts. Especially as this story is focusing on the past, I think it gives an old feeling to it and it isn't too bland.

From Script to Screen: Storyboard Roughs

Soundscape - Thumbnail set 1

Secret Lair: Orthographic Views [Thumbnails 32-41]

Decided to make the Statue Head the Hero Prop for my scene. This is currently getting modeled, although I'm not entirely sure how well this is going to work.

I also decided to make orthographic views for other props in my scene to help me model.

Secret Lair: Avian Dictator development

To be perfectly honest, I've slightly been dreading this. Mainly because I've been worried how on earth I'll be able to incorporate dictatorship without being ridiculously generic.

Where dictatorship is involved you tend to see very strict, open halls with banners sprawled everywhere with the emblem of the nation - a trope I nearly fell into before I spoke to Jordan this Monday. 

We discussed that I would need to incorporate these ideas without getting caught up in the typicalities of the trope - and also involve the avian aspect as well. 

So instead of creating an environment for humans with an bird-like touch, I went opposite. 

Below I painted the environment I suspect my avian dictator to live in (the location of the lair being in an underground cavern in which the giant tree's roots created/made a path to...which is currently being developed)

I tried to incorporate uniformality in the form of the identical birdhouses, and the source of power/leadership being focused at the tree in the center. 

No.1 is the original without any colour filters and messing around with the hue and saturation like in 2&3. 

After deciding on the type of environment my character will possibly be based in, I was able to design him a bit easier:

Seeing as their living in a woodland I decided on a more tribal/elder-look for my character. 

I will have thumbnails of the secret lair and hero prop ready for later. I would love to hear your views on this take of my avian dictator!

Secret Lair Thumbnails 5-31

Collection of thumbnails from pre-OGR and after.

These I messed around with the hue and saturation for different highlights, however this design has had lots of changes since.

Cinematic Spaces Thumbnails: 65-76

Here I've selected my favorite 4 thumbnails from the past few sets. 65-68 is a combination of the crystals and lava described in the first extract (which I sketched out separately first).

Using a separate layer set to "overlay", I painted over the B&W thumbnails. Once I was happy with the colours I then created another layer on top set at "luminosity". With the airbrush tool I lightly painted over to either give it a glowing/smokey/light effect to them. This worked especially well with the lava & crystal set.

I can see from this set my favorites emerging to be used as my final pieces. However, as much as I like no.69; I'm not entirely sure it will alongside such an impacting orange mix and green. An experiment would be for the best before I set on that if I want to use it as a final image.

Cinematic Spaces: Thumbnails 33-64

In the second extract I was provided from "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" the find themselves at the shores of a never ending ocean.

"A vast sheet of water, the commencement of a lake or am ocean, spread far away beyond the range of the eye..." "The deeply indented shore was lined with a breadth of fine shining sand, softly lapped by the waves, and strewn with the small shells which had inhabited by the first of created beings." - Chapter XXX

My favourite from this set is no.35 which I referenced a sea cove, for the sunlight through the open gaps of the cove I reduced the opacity and blurred it to smooth my strokes, and no.37 with the waves lightly hitting the shore.

In the next part of my second extract the location changes to a forest of over sized mushrooms. I've never actually draw mushrooms properly before, so I thought it would be useful to do a quick study on various ones. This took less than 5 minutes to do, so it was very beneficial without being time consuming.

I therefore attempted to put these into practice in my thumbnails:

I enjoyed trying different views for each thumbnail and my personal favorite from this set would be no.50.

In other sketches I have included the over sized fern tree and over foliage as described in the extract.

Cinematic Spaces: Thumbnails 17-32

From the first extract, focusing on the lava. I personally like no.8 with the lava pouring from above. 

I tried doing an underneath shot for no.2 with the lava dripping from above, I liked the idea but I'm unsure whether or not it worked. 

Cinematic Spaces: Thumbnails 1-16

For this project I was given 3 extracts from "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. 

I've also decided to split each extract up and focus on one particular description at a time, do 16 thumbnails on that, move on to the next piece of description and then finally combine all the descriptions for a further 16 thumbnails. This is just so I can ensure I'll be getting well above the 100 minimum thumbnails for this project. 

Here are my first 16 based from this description in the first extract provided:

"...crystals of opaque quartz, set with limpid tears of glass, and hanging like clustered chandeliers from the vaulted roof, seemed as it were to kindle and form a sudden illumination as we passed on our way." - Journey to the Center of the Earth, Chapter XVII

I've primarily focused on different angles and views of the clusters of crystal in the cavern. 

Personal favourites from this collection is 3 & 4. I really like the view from the bottom of the crystal pit (no.3) and no.4 feels like your entering the mouth of a very toothy beast~

Another thing I did with these is slightly airbrush with over the crystals (setting the opacity low) to give them an illuminated effect which I personally think worked nicely in that aspect as well as give the caverns some depth. 

Summer Project: Thumbnails 1-23

Well, first blog entry and this has the first few bits for the summer project that's been set. It's been quite a fun experience working from the selection of objects provided to form these weird and wonderful things. I have more of these lying around on scraps of paper so they'll be getting scanned and edited to get posted too~

Mixture of quick sketches, more detailed and silhouettes for this round:

Tried focusing more on structures this time: