Starting the Negotiated Brief

Well the negotiated brief is all about setting ourselves targets. We could either go with something we would be comfortable doing, or we could go for something we had never tried before or wanted to improve on. I really enjoyed the last pre-production project so I thought I would have a go at that again.

We had to pitch our ideas to Kathy and Georg, I had decided I just wanted to do a production bible, however they both suggested I push myself a bit further and do a storyboard to go with it. Sounds like a lot of work... that's because it is!! Ahhhh!! I think it will be OK, I just have to plan it out carefully...

I am going to do a pre-production bible and storyboard for an adaptation of the teenage fiction 'Lord Sunday' by Garth Nix. This is the final book of a series of seven all named after the days of the week. I choose this book because it contains great character descriptions and I can really picture it in my mind when I read it... Now I just have to get the thoughts from my head onto paper.... The final outcomes from this project will be:

• Character Designs
• Background Deisigns
• Concept Work
• Storyboard of one chapter

All presented nicely in a bible...

More Essaying....

As if the last essay wasn't enough to stress me out... Here's another two more! Although I was plesently suprised at my grade. I think the general feel from the animator is that essays are evil. I know writing defiantly isn't one of my strong points... This time we have to do another literature review and a film analysis. I still going along with my theme of representation of woman in animation and have looked at the texts:

• Elizabeth Bell, Somatexts at the Disney Shop
• Amy M Davis, Good Girls and Wicked Witches
• Jayne Pilling, Women in Animation: A Compendium

The first two focus more on Disney's influence on how women are represented in animation, while Pilling looks at the work of independant female animators.

Oh yeah, I had better mention that I want to look at the differences in the representation of womoen between comercial animation and independant animation. There you go, that's my perspective for now.

The animation I looked at for my analysis is a girls night out. And here it is:

More textures

This is my design for the sky dome in Stress fest. Adam wanted a sunset on different layers so he could change the colours to suit the animation in post.

This is the sign post texture map. Its painted so it looks quite rustic and grubby.

Textures, textures everywhere...

These are a few of the tent textures Ive done for Adam. I really like the blue and yellow John Peel design. Although it was very difficult to work out where the stripes needed to go on the UV map.

BEER!!! A student's necessity...

I was asked to design some lager cans using typical colours and styles. Adam gave me a few examples and I looked at a few others on the Internet to get a clearer idea. I'm quite happy with the level of detail in these designs and hope Adam is too.

One thing that I could of thought about more when designing them is that the main logo is normally repeated twice on the can and less space if left for the ingredients and warnings etc.

Editing Ground UV

Adam had to slightly alter the size of the of the texture map, making the path longer and stretching out the existing image. I edited the work I had already done to create the new texture map.

The colours were a bit bright for the scene, so Adam gave me some photos of the kind of tones he was aiming for and I adjusted a few things in Photoshop. I ended up with this final texture which looks much better and Adam was happier with it.

Production Report: Preproduction

For this project we were set the task of creating a pre-production bible of one of five Dr Who scripts. We started off working in groups and researching all of the different time periods the scrips were set in. This helped to give us a better idea of which script we wanted to carry on looking at. I chose the script called Turn Left. It is set in a city not on this planet, their culture is similar to Earth's Oriental Chinese culture.

One of my main influences for the design of this planet was from the film Blade Runner, with the grotty looking streets and tall imposing buildings. I also used this film to get ideas for the style of my characters, especially Donna, with her punkish hair and face paint.

I drew several designs for each character, drawing from each, my favourite features and styles. When I had roughly got what I was looking for I refined my designs until I had the character I wanted. I had looked at loads of market stalls and images of Shanghai and also researched Chinese interior design, until I had a clear image of where this animation would be set. Before I started on my final background design I had the exact image in my head planed out. Knowing the exact personalities of my characters helped me to pose them in the final concept work, and also knowing the background helped me to get the setting and lighting how I wanted it.


I created these pieces of 'art' by using acrylic on brown paper. I decided to paint them quite large so I could get the extra detail I needed easily. The painting of the market street is the biggest and is almost 2 metres long.

I wanted to continue the theme of rough, dirtiness and brown paper throughout my bible. I also used a Chinese style font for the titles. I tried to arrange it simply so there wasn't too much on each page to confuse people as they look through it. And I also arranged it in clear sections, showing development to the final concepts.

I think the concepts work the best because I feel you really get a sense of character through their poses. However, they are only two of them and I would of liked to do more of them. One of the major problems I found with this project is that by doing the painting so big, I found it difficult to digitalize them. Taking photos with a digital camera always enhanced the shiny paint and whited out sections so I had to take them at an angle and warp them back into shape on Photoshop.

I think if I do another pre-production project I will defiantly try to improve my concept art skills as this is an area I an very interested in. I will also try to consider the practicalities of my medium before I start.