Mood Board... Last one!

Made together with Isabel, we have the final official mood board! This is a summary of all of the things we are referencing from up until now.

Sketches of the house and a pic of the interior

Environments Inside House 'Mood Board'

I thought this might help with creating our rooms. Here are some environments from the game Amnesia. The environments really have an atmosphere about them and use lighting really well. In fact the lighting is really important in achieving the right atmosphere for the game. I'm not saying that we should make old style furniture (the game is set in the 1800's!) but we should aim to recreate the empty, lonely feeling you get from these rooms. 

Aaaaand here's some concept art from Up, the indoors of the house (sorry bout the poor quality! I'll try n get better quality pics or bring the book in...).

Tangled (I think I will try and find more concept art, good example of a small room):

Storyboard/animatic

Rough storyboards set out for the rethought script. This is the storyboards compiled, to be further developed as I create future animatics.

Light & Concept Art

I started working on the light and different concept approaches to visualize the story better, giving special attention to the light and the shadows casted by the sun.

I mixed different techniques to experiment and see which style could we could go for the story, without limitations.

 First Concept: Illustrated style and highly detailed, with traditional techniques.

Second Concept: blue & purple colors, with stylized trees.

Third Concept: Stylized and sharp edges with pastel palette and red.

Eleanor

I found this to be a good reference for mood and lighting and story.

Some more inspiration for the film as we move into production

Script Update for Semester2

Updated Script

Here's a script updated with the things we discussed the last time.

Some things can be modified as we go along, especially the 2D illustration bits in the pictures that tell the backstory so I am open to suggestions but it is certain that we need to model: 

-the main character

-indoors of cottage w/ window, picture frames at a mantelpiece

-outdoors of cottage with forest environment

-bedroom with other picture frames, window

-rose

(I forgot to mention in the script, the environment is autumn at the beginning and becomes winter/snowy... forgot to edit that in)

roughly what i think but give me your feedback :)

working on animatic!

Sketches

Some of the sketches I did a while ago for the project. I did tons of sketches in my sketchbook based on the script, scanned and edited a handful of them and colored them in Photoshop. Some of the sketches were colored using watercolors and ink and scanned. 

Comments, feedback and crits are always welcome!

Character Model

I started working on the character model for our group project while waiting for the script to be finalized. The character is no longer based on a child, so I have put the concept art for the child aside and reverted to an earlier design. I have kept the mesh fairly generic for now to allow room for any changes till the script gets finalized sometime this week. So far I have modeled the base mesh in Maya and have been moving back and forth between Maya and Zbrush as I begin to define it.

Shintaro Ohata

I came across the beautifully brilliant works by Shintaro Ohata, who turns mundane everyday scenes  into dramatic pieces of art by combining his paintings and sculptures that use interesting lighting . His work struck a chord with me since it is very close to my vision of the characters for the project as they employ a painterly look to a three- dimensional medium.

As I work on our group masters project, I have been re-watching and studying (mostly old) films. What is interesting is how most things you watched in the past come back to you as triggers on totally unrelated projects. The highly detailed backgrounds and the free spirited characters in Tekkonkinkreet based on the manga series by Matsumoto Taiyo is one such film that I can never tire of watching.

Cottage Reference Pics

Spiderwick Chronicles

 

Robin Hood (Ridley Scott)

Brave

Return to Oz

Tangled

 Maybe not that relevant, but thought the icy interior was interesting...

Dr Zhivago

Dr Zhivago

Cinematography // Window-gazing

I compiled some reference for different composition of the part of the story where the character is looking out the window. Upon observation of these shots we have decided that larger windows make the character look smaller, weaker. Moments where the character is reflective and has a positive outlook are quite warmly lit, whereas moments where the character is feeling contained, separate from society, or in moments of sadness, are lit coldly, with the use of blue lighting.