Tuesday 23 August 2011

Holiday

I went away to Cornwall last week - but took the laptop with me in order to do some work while I was there - apart from the days that I drove to get there and back. It was 5 hours to get there and 7 and a half to get back due to problems on the M5.

Here are some pics to show where I was working - all very different to the environment at home.  Great view out of the window!

I re-drew Kara in Illustrator and she looked better than the quick sketches that I created in Flash (shown in the previous entry). I worked on making her look wistful and pensive. I finally decided on the art direction and chose to use a limited colour palette for the intro scenes.  Her skin is grey to symbolise the limbo land that she is trapped in and to portray that she feels soulless.  

As previously mentioned in a past entry, I have been inspired by some of Hans Bacher's pre-production sketches where he uses tones of one colour to great effect.  I will use this style for the intro scenes and then use a range of styles within the interactive scenes to hopefully keep the interest of the user - as they enter a different portal, the styles will change.  Nina Paley incorporates a range of styles effectively within her animation: Sita sings the blues (2007).



Nina worked on this for 3 years and is happy for people to copy, share and distribute the film, although it has caused some controversy in India regarding the topic of the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana.

Back to the topic of Kara - here is the updated digital sketch.

Kara drawn in Illustrator



Upon returning, I have created the Cat-Bot - Baz.  The name derives from an Egyptian God of home protection, who protected women and children above all others.  You can see from my entry dated 11th August, that some of the 'cat' sketches were becoming very Egyptian - I tamed this down for the final character drawings and just hinted at the Egyptian link.

I found it more beneficial to draw Baz in Flash due to probems that I had with working with the illustrator drawing of Kara within Flash.  Every line that I drew within Illustrator was grouped and when I needed to break the groups apart, they broke up and made it a nightmare to try to do even the most simplest of eye blinks!  I worked until the early hours one morning trying to sort it out - an absolute waste of my time (which is so precious right now as the deadline looms).  My foray into Illustrator is not over, but I have found that by using the pencil tool in Flash, I can get the same result and I am able to seperate the character body parts much more effectively..... why have I used the Painbrush tool in Flash for so long and not the Pencil!!

Here is Baz - drawn in Flash
As you can see, the effect is similar to the Illustrator drawing, but far easier to work with!

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