A CHEEKY LITTLE TEASER

so its been about 105 painful days of labourious animated
nonsense i have finished all animation/b.gs/etc...but o no the fun
doesnt stop...oh no sir because i have the joy and pleasure of
colouring every single frame again...
oh yeh and i have mumps....fun fun fooooocking fun!

ok ...so i have been keeping my cards preety close to my chest so far...
not through choice i might add, just havnt been blogging as much as i
should have...of coarse there have been many changes since the last
ramblings...one of which is the aesthetic,.

ok bare with me a second...for some reason i was trying to achieve
a very mature, painterly, textured aesthetic using inks and
parchment...all taditional like!? like so0000...


at first i was loving it, but it was soon clear that the choice of
aesthetic was incredibly hard to reproduce B/G after B/G...
ofcoarse im no chinese painter...so i was soon asking myself
"what the f%#k am i doing"

and so i headed towards a more graphic less detailed B/G aesthetic



ok i no it just a little tinkering in photoshop...
a few layer filters etc... but
i actually really like it,. its got the feel of chinese culture
but the graphic, solid, vector art feel of flash etc...
the characters also stand out more which is a real plus...
heres a few more examples of the new aesthetic - compared to the
old...

AESTHETIC/B.G/L.O DEVELOPMENTS

i finally finished tinkering with my aesthetic...








I have been off the radar for almost a month now...but i feel all
is going well. I have almost 30 sec of finshed animation and about 1 min
worth of keys...i have also finished inking the first scene so hopefully
i will have a finished short teaser for wednesday.

Background examples

CHARACTER ROTATIONS

LING

JIA

THE TIGER (not finished yet...)

AESTHETIC MOCK-UP

Need to experiment more with shadows etc but you get the idea!?

COLOURED CHARACTERS

i decided that colour should be dull and pasty...dont
like the look of solid digital colour...especially when
the image isnt completely digitally traced...i.e in illustrator etc
this being so ive reinforced the idea of the old parchment look.
after rooting around in my art materials i randomly found
a small piece of rice paper...exactly what the chinese use for
their lush paintings...so using this as a backdrop for the robes, body
etc...it didnt look so strange...well at least i dont think so...!?

As my colour palette is dull and grayish...colouring the tiger orange
didnt seem an option...dont get me wrong i most certainly pondered
the idea for a while...anyway i prefer white tigers...more magical i suppose

LING


JIA


THE TIGER

BRUSH PAINTED LAYOUT/ASETHETIC CONT

...im loving the look of this ^^^
...everything i was originally aiming for...
unfortunately i didnt paint it...
...however, its exactly the style
im going to aim for from now on. It looks dull and somber...
has the feel of weathered parchment...and it incorperates
strong use of pos/neg space...large shapes -- small positive detail.

here's a new and improved step by step formula for
my proposed layout/aesthetic...its not completely there yet...
but its heading in a direction im happy with

my brush work isnt brilliant...but it is slowly improving as
i get more confident...oh and LING hasnt been coloured yet.
...ill post colour tests tomorrow.

FINAL ANIMATIC

mISSED THe RUSH!!!!

absolutely pissed i missed it! really gotta get a
new job...it sucks having to work on weds...

still no sound FX ...have a few stored already...
there are still sooo many waiting to be recorded

A BRUSH PAINTED LAYOUT

heres a simple step by step formula for my
proposed layout/aesthetic

from the hand-made to the not yet finished...


painted with brush and watercolurs...captured...


...contrast/brigtness...shadows etc...

...foreground layers etc..


...colour photo filter -- set the mood -- contrast/brightness etc..