Test Shot -Background and Concept shot

For my Test shot I decided to do the scene where 'Pipin' sneaks into a building which leads him to the Majors office. I took a rough background from the Animatic and tidied it up a bit adding colour. I then did a quick line drawing of the characters in the shot to give a general idea of what's happening. Now lets animate... 

Storyboard for Pick and Mix project

11 Second Development

Starting to create the background in colour 

Finished Background

Concept Shot 

Concept shot 2 

Overall I'm really pleased with the aesthetic of my designs. I do however think that I'm going to struggle with Animating this. I love creating concepts but once its time to actually make things move, I hit a wall. I'm also not sure whether I'll animate using the characters I've made up in layers on photoshop, or whether I'll take the background and use outlines to re draw the characters frame by frame. Stay tuned to find out... 

Pick and Mix project development

I decided to look closer at Angels within Medieval Art. The below picture (Artist: Unknown) really caught my eye and although it isn't Art Deco inspired, I saw potential in taking it further. 

to begin with I used  simple lines, which was easy because the tapestry itself is made up of lots of basic lines and shapes. I took inspiration from some of Cassandre's more linear and geometric works and created the below image. 

I didn't want my previous 'Art Deco' inspired Angel wings to go to waste, so on development of this character, I swapped the wings out and ended up with, what I believe, to be a really strong take on a character design based on the Art Deco movement. 

I did the same process with the Rat 

Creating this charismatic looking Rat who could be humorous as well as looking very artistic! Say goodbye to Danger mouse and hello to 'Deco' Mouse! 

Now, this took forever... but I'm so happy with the result. My issue now is how to stop the characters from blending into the background... 

which is exactly what happens here. I changed around with the lightness of each later to make the characters brighter however it still isn't something that would translate into a strong animation. It's too much to take in...

...and this is even worse. In adding this amount of colour to white outlines, I've really confused the image. Whilst I'm glad I tried it, it's not something I'll do again! 

Finished Office for 'PIE'

I was really happy with how this ended up. I definitely think if I were to go back and start over I would have thought more about adding subtle quirky details into the furniture etc. However I wanted to keep the Art Nouveau style obvious whilst tying in with the rest of my teams concepts! 

PIE - City Layout

PIE - Backgrounds

Lip Sync Test

So for some insane reason I had to choose a piece of Audio which requires really quick mouth movement, which to me, is looking a little messy. I could do with taking some of the movement out at the beginning. Which would probably go unnoticed in terms of the lips syncing up to the speech, because it moves so quick that its hard to follow. Although I'm extremely happy with the rest of the Lip Sync. This is only Character one of the conversation: