Initial Characters

Today has been a very productive day and I finally have some sketches of my gorillas, now I have these images I can really start to think about developing my characters as well as my overall idea. I have had great fun developing these characters as I feel that I am really starting to develop a style that is hopefully unique to myself. 

I have also learnt how to use an Autodesk package called Sketchbook Pro, it allows you to draw straight onto the computer as if you were drawing on paper, the tools allow you draw in pencil, pen as well as many more options, to give you different effects to enhance your sketches. Although it is a digital art form the pencil tool looks just like the real thing so if you ever have a chance to use this software then I would highly recommend you do !

Sketchbook Pro Drawings, this page has both older and younger versions of the gorilla.

   

Pencil Sketches of gorillas

Animals have a huge impact on my life, I enjoy the sights of natural wonder and beauty and want to give you all the opportunity to gain an insight into my outlook on the natural world.

I chose to focus my animation on this topic as I have a great concern that very soon the mountain gorilla will become another animal that we will only be able to see in photographs, I also want to make people aware of the implications of poaching and the horror it brings to the creatures when in their natural habitat.

As we can easily identify to the creature I believe that the audience can have a much stronger and deeper connection to the animation and hopefully receive the intended emotions from the characters in the film. 

THE ANIMATION PROCESS

To begin the process of developing my idea I produced some sketches of background ideas, basic character designs, these allowed me to understand how I was going to write my story, what characteristics I was going to give my characters and what the animations overall feel would be. The sketches are shown below:

This image is of my 4 main shots in the film, once these are established I can begin to think about developing each scene  in further detail, add colour and finalise each image for the final product.

As you can see from the above four images I have developed the ideas into better designs, I have ensured that the new designs have these features: Good Composition, Animating space, Aesthetically pleasing and realistic. Ensuring that I have these few features will allow me to keep the aesthetic continuity flowing throughout the short film. 

Images:

1. Main Forest scene

2. Treetops scene

3. Main Forest back view scene

4. Birds eye view/Helicopter scene/Establishing scene

Quick Ideas of Backgrounds and Characters

This post has some initial ideas that I produced so that I could develop my characters and backgrounds. Rough ideas are essential for progression in any animation and so by doing this your final ideas can become as strong and effective to the audience as possible. From these pictures below you will able to see my progression throughout the duration of this project and how my designs develop and become more refined.

The above two images were my first attempts at my backgrounds design, however I felt that there wasn't really a style or continuity flowing between both images, I initially wanted to produce all my backgrounds by hand however after doing another attempt shown below, I felt that Digital painting was a better and more efficient approach to my background production. 

As you can see these images are incomplete however this was purely due to the fact that I found better ways to producing my designs and so did not want to waste unnecessary time producing things I may not have used. 

Initial Baby Gorilla Sketches

Initial Poacher Design

Initial Poacher Design 2

Panda Idea

Baby Gorilla Sketch 

Teen Gorilla Sketch

Studies from Howletts Zoo

Studies from Howletts Zoo

Gorilla Sketch

Hopefully just from looking at these initial designs you may be able to see some characters beginning to develop.

Keep checking out what I get up to to see my developments!!