war of the worlds...

Ok, having completed my storyboard, and the whole thing having been pretty much scripted out, iv started really thinking about my pipeline, strengths that i may have, weakness's that i can avoid and whatnot.

Here are a few bulletpoints of things im confident i can do -

• Animating in Maya
• Animating 2-D or in Toonboom.
• Colouring, set design & everything else involved style wise
• Lighting in Maya
• Recording sound

and the things i have issues with -

• Modelling in Maya
• Rigging in Maya
• Editing in general, after effects, or final cut. (particular nightmare for me!)
• Credits etc.

These are things i am going to set out to work upon, or seek help with in the next few coming weeks so as not to be so clueless when they pop up in production. Aswell as that, i am starting to navigate my way around ToonBoom, with a couple of personal tutorings by Simon, it seems easy enough to achieve what i am looking for.

One thing thats been a nice idea that Kyle contributed to me was (because the film ends on such a sad tragic note...which of course will leave all of the audience on a bit of a downer, having fell in love with little Mooky), maybe i should have something cute & quirky in the credits! This i like, so iv just stuck with the simple idea of Mook dancing about bottom screen whilst flower heads rain down during the credits. Setting out to achieve this is one thing, we shall have to see how achievable it really is. Here's the idea in a nutshell!

I have also been wondering about the overall appeal of the film, maybe a 'nothing' environment isnt such a bright idea? I have been playing with different 'surfaces' so to speak for which the scene takes part in, as part of my test pipeline.

For the pipeline, i am merely doing a walk cycle in toonboom, colouring in ToomBoom to see how it exports.

This is the simple floor i am using for the test, and how the character will look on screen colour wise etc. in ToomBoom.

I feel it looks a little bland, simplistic...so iv gone back to the drawing board....literally (haaaa!)

...and iv come up with this....

...which i feel looks much more accomplished, and appealing.

However, it was all coloured in photoshop.

This will all of course be irrelevant if once i have my model made (currently being worked on by Joe Cornell) in Maya, i choose to use it.

This is the perspective turnaround drawing i have given to Joe to use to model Mook, it also has a couple of notes on how i would like it rigged aswell to make it easier to understand the matrix of his movement, and computer clean-uppy shizzle that may need to occur, and the amount of squash & stretch required. I also played with a few colours for him, but i feel the pink & grey/blue are just too moomin!

Time shall tell...in the meantime, walk cycle should be done by the end of the week! Keep your eyes peeled!