The Final Storyboard! And a concept

Finally, this is the final storyboard. These are gonna be used as a back up animatic for our Dummy project. They took me quite a while to do since there are so many, I still have about at least 20 to go! But that's cool, should be done by the end of today hopefully, but feel as though my right hand will drop off at any minute. Anyways I wanted to take into consideration the lighting that will be involved in the environment, which is the moon. I have this vision in my head, that the lighting will create this sort of magical, romantic world for both the dummies. I hope that we'll be able to pull that off some how because when I know nothing about lighting when it comes to Maya. They may even come a time that I'll need to install Maya 10 or 9, but I'll cross that road when I get there, I've got other things to worry about. Not musch to say on this, except that I hope these images portray what it is that I'm trying to put across to my colleagues and tutors. More coming soon, hopefully an animatic. Peace!

Modifications...again?

Well these are some of the new samples I've done, recently. It used to end with the male dummy giving out his heart but things, have changed. It now ends with the two in a awkward position, after the malle dummy tries to make her laugh by doing things. Anyways Dave a tutor who looked at our story says that in needs more involvement with the male dummy, more emotional I think he meant. During this discussion JB said that that was what he had in his original idea, so we're now putting back that family picture, but now also the PC plays a role. Since he's a tabulous rasa (I think that's how its spelt) he sees a screen saver of multiple pictures of the artist and his fiancee. He sees the couple lovingly together, a diamond ring and a check, during this the dummy begins to feel what he sees, companionship. So as he looks away from the screen and sits down on the edge of the table he bows his head in depression, because he looks around at the large space around him and he ralises that he's alone.

That small part is a prelude to the main part of the story. Hopefully with this, the audience will get a better understanding of why, the dummy does what he is doing. Another topic I want to adress is the Pirates of the Produce Aisle, I haven't been given any word on what to do, so I'll take the initiative, and draw something. There's gonna be some more concepts coming your way, stay tuned.

A little modification

I don't know If I've said this already but just in case. There ending has changed a little, after speaking with Dan Dalli he said that the ending was a bit cliche'd (I think that's how it's spelt) so we ended up with the male Dummy entertaining the female one by making an ass of himself. So J.B says after messing with the coin why not make him do a backflip and mess himself up a little. After that she'll come off the box to see if he's ok and then it looks like they'reabout to kiss but then the owner comes back in and they have to play lifeless again. Fade to black. My duty now is to tighten up the storyboard a bit, and draw out the conclusion of it. Things are beginning to progress smoothly, I think. Oh and I have to do some office concepts like a mood board some reference pics, and concepts. The art shop design has been dropped, thank God. An office design will definitely be easier.

More Concepts

Some more concepts, I'll be updating this post when I have more up. Damn I still have to do that poster for tomorrow.

The new, The Old and The Thumbnails

Phew! ok here's most of the concepts that I've done so far. What you see here first of all is the rough thumbnails I did for our new story, you remember the new story right? Well that's five pages worth of it, didn't want to print out all that would be far too much. It took a little deviation from the way JB told us on Facebook or Dummy website, one of the two anyways. the synopsis was posted at 8pm on monday, but I didn't know it until yesterday aftrnoon after the thumbnails were done. I put a box for the females position or tower of power, after looking at The Incredibles clip I thought that it would be a good element in there. After all women do seem like to have the power of control these days, (that was sexist wasn't it?) Anyway after drawing the items that the male brings to her, I thought that each item represented something about his character. For instance that encyclopedia represents that he's knowledgable about things, the watch symbolises that he's punctual and on time and the £1 coin, represents that he's rich. The heart...was JBs idea but I think it means a willingness to emote and openess. Man that lecture really inspired me on monday.

Right the designs, are self explanatory, but for the sake of this blog I shall elaborate. The nicely, bight coloured versions represent when they were new and shiny, the dull dark colouring one represent them old and withered out. That's about it, although I don't know if we'll be using the old or new models in the production process, guess we'll wait and see. Next up shall be the layout of the art shop designs and accessories from the old synopsis idea. Even though we're not doing it anymore, I still think it's nice to show my art work. So until then peace out!

Ok news update on our story.

The story starts with our artist dummy standing, still and unused on his owners desk. The artist finishes work for the day and gets up to leave the room, however he suddenly remembers that he has one remaining thing to do. He pulls another dummy from his bag, and places it on the desk next to his original dummy. The new dummy is a she, a girl dummy.
When the artist leaves the room the male dummy suddenly leaps off his stand and looks at his new femail companion in wonder and excitement. The female dummy gets off her stand daintily. She looks around in haughty disdain and regards her new male companion with something akin to disgust. The male dummy rushes to give her a hug but she pushes him aside in disgust, she pushes him aside and he lands on his butt.
He looks around and notices a shiney object on the desk, a beautiful shiney, chrome ball paperweight. He runs to it and picks it up and runs to his new dummy friend. She looks at him and his new object in dainty disdain. She pushes it from his hands and looks away. He looks around again and notices a big crystal vase on the side of the desk, full of roses. He runs and grabs one, snaps off a really long stem and runs to her. She doesn’t even look at him, and pushes the rose away. He looks non-plussed and a little hurt, as much as a dummy with no face can look hurt and confused that is.
He is about to walk away but notices light glinting off a scalpel. He picks it up and crouches over in the darkness in one corner of the desk. He digs the scalpel deep and carves out a shape. Suddenly he gets up and walks up his new female friend. She looks at him and then the heart shaped chunk of wood that he hands her. She looks at his chest and notices that he is missing matching piece, she looks at the piece in her hand, turns it over, shakes it and then looks at him now more slightly happy than she was before. She then waves to him to join her.
Fade to black.

I spoke to JB on this, I believe he's taking the audiences comprehension into consideration. He wasn't sure if the audience would get the whole loneliness concept. So he went for something that's beens seen before and the audience would go away feeling like they understood everything. I for one do hope this is the last, we must press onwards we're already behind schedule a bit.

Dummy synopsis

We have finally decided on the synopsis for Dummy and it's about time too because we're already a week behind schedule. As far as I understand it the male Dummy is sitting on a shelf in an art shop, looking at life go by through the shops window. After a long while he spots another dummy up above him from across the room. He feels very excited and happy to see another one of his kind. However the trouble is getting to the other dummy, he is going to have to go through a number of obsticles to get his goal. I don't know exactly how he(male dummy) does this but, when he gets to the top they, it seems that both he and her(female) dummy were looking for the same thing, companionship. So they both sit together hand in hand watching life go by together.

I have been assigned a task for monday. To come up the concepts for the male and female dummy in their old and new states, to desgin the layout of the shop and it's accessories such as pencils, brushes, paints, rulers etc. I also have to desing what the shop will look like during the day and night. Then when monday we'll start to do thumbnails of the stoyboards. I'll say this now environment is not my strongest point, but hell what better time to start practicing, besides I need more skills in my artistic arsenal. So, let's rock this!

The Plots for the Crew

Yesterday we were racking our brains trying to figure out what plot we should do, but in the end the ideas was heading nowhere and everything was just becoming a waste of time. So I suggested that we'll all go home and each of us will come up with a coupl brief plotlines, that we think will to the characters good. The more plot lines that we make the more of a success we'll have becuase then we can come in tomoorow review what we have and then pick out any elements in our plots that seem strong and replace and take out any that seems weak. Now I for one, is just loosely apart of this group, therefore I don't really share it's passion for the story of it. Quite frankly I thought the first draft of Lewis's story was good enough to begin with, which is why it was hard for me to come up with ideas. I know boo-hoo-hoo for me right? Well whatever, at least I done 4 plot lines and here there are:

Plot 1: The pirates used to be the top cereal in the whole country of pier chest grove (bare with me). People absolutely used to adore them; they were the envy of all the other cereals. That is until one day another cereal knocked them from the top of the shelf. So the three pirates strip themselves from the cereal box and try to get back to the top while carrying their own cereal box with them.

Plot2: The Pirate gang have a rival crew to contend with, in the Produce Aisle. This is basically a shop that bread beard, path and walker are in charge of. However the Sirens, who are women that charm men into doing their bidding and taking their territory. They succeed in kicking the pirates out and they change it into Sirens Aisle. While the pirates are wandering what happened Walker is the first to figure out the sirens weaknesses. So the pirates make a plan to get their shop back and succeed.

Plot3: The Pirates trying to get hold of a certain treasure and they have to enter a drinking contest and win to get it. However they are up against worthy adversaries called the Scalawag crew. Two teams have to see how grog they can each drink, however there’s something wrong with the grog that the pirate crew are drinking. The grog they’re drinking makes them fat with each drink they take in. The scalawag crew are behind the scheme and the pirate must find a way to beat them.

Plot4: Siren Brawl. This plot involves the pirates trying to get through a gate called Anchors pass. However it is being guarded by (yes you guessed it) a siren. These creature of the deep, are known to be half female and half serpent. As the crew reaches anchors pass they encounter her and the ordeal becomes a game of cat and mouse.

Well that's it feel free to take them apart as you see fit. Check you guys tomorrow.

My idea for Dummy

Hey Neil here. I've finally managed to get my version of the storyboard done. To tell you the truth I mostly left JBs idea of the storyboards alone I only changed the beginning and end of it a bit. What I did mostly is changed some of the actiona a little and added and subtracted some camera shots, that would make it more visually entertaining. One of the things that I'm proud of about it is the positioning of the character in each shot. For example in JB begining shots the dummy was way to close to the lamp after he did his dance. There's no way that he could take a run up and jump on the lamp switch at such a close distance. So, when the dummy first drops from his perch or whatever, he stumbles across the desk because he's trying to get used to his movement. After that he walks, like a regular human being. Being happy with himself he decides to do a little dance to celebrate. Anyway all this is in the storyboards and as I said JBs storyboard looks mostly solid as it is. This is the most fun I've had doing a storyboard since the Deckard project. Tomorrow though, we'll see if my ideas will be approved or not. Enjoy and peace out for now.

My Job.

Well just a short post today. JB, the rest of the group and I disscussed what would be taking place. My job is to anaylise the storyboard and offer some ideas that will make the storyboarding a bit better. On monday I'll present to the team in the meeting and we'll discuss what works and what doesn't work. When that's all said and done then I can start to make the final design of the storyboards. Also I'll have to try and provide some concept design environments for Lewis, now drawing evironments isn't my strogest point in drawing but I'll see what I can come up with.