Stick Animatic

Yesterday when working on a animatic for a separate group module, I was able to throw together 1 minute and 16 seconds worth of material in just a single day.

Learning from that experience I’ve decided to do the same for my final year project. Below are the new character models for each character.

After I plan every shot with stick men and crude backgrounds I will re-do every shot with more detailed designs. I think this will be a quick and easy way to plan out the animatic before drawing everything up all neat.

Character Model Sheets

Work is going well; I’ve completed the rough pencils of the three main character models, in the process of deciding whether or not I will bother to create the two secondary ones Bill and Jill, or either cut them for generic zombies or just wing the designs in the animatic stage. Also the generic zombies will either be the same one copied and pasted a bunch of times, or I’ll make three that I will copy and paste a bunch of times.

Tom



Bob



Janice



Most likely I wont do as much prep work for later designs since as I write this I’m at risk at falling behind schedule, and must do what I can to move on to stage 2. The above designs will work as the main guideline for the animatic drawings, although I will be drawing the animatic in flash and the designs will most likely improve. I will do final cleaned up versions of all three when I get to the colour part of stage 3 in the project plan.

Bob Redesign

After doing some research by looking at more zombie designs, I redesigned Bob to look a little more creepy and ghoulish. I felt the previous design looked a little too young and friendly, and while I am going for humor, I still want Bob to look like more of a threat.

I started by drawing out a non infected version of Bob based on his current design. I did this so I could home in on his key features, as well as try and figure out what the character was like before he got infected. My idea was that when human Bob was uptight and very self important in the way that he stands, once he became a zombie, he loosened up a little sort of like when stricken person tries alcohol or drugs for the first time. I like to think that Bob is a lot happier as a zombie then as a human.

So far the changes are mainly in the eyes and the ripped off part of his mouth. after looking at the pictures below I was able to add more details to these areas which in turn make the character look more messed up, which I think works well.

The blank eyes were taken from this drawing that I found here.

The ripped off jaw was inspired by these two above images, first taken from The Haunted World of El Superbeasto DVD, and the second here. 

Lastly I took a look at this fan drawing of Jonathan Coulton to finish off the hair. This image can be found here. 

Final Character Clean Up Concept

Here is my 3rd attempt at cleaning up the characters. I am very close now to drawing up the final model sheet rotations that I will refer to when drawing the animatic. At the moment I am completely happy with the look of Tom, finally getting his hair right by taking another look at the Peter nodding toy on the Office Space Merchandise image. Janice’s Hair still needs a little more refining, and in the next drawing I will try to make Bob a little more taller and bulk as I feel he looks too young at the moment.

 

Character Concept Ideas

After deciding on the aspects that I liked best of the first set of drawings, I continued to refine each character design, developing and adjusting them to the style based on what I learned from my research and copying practice. To help with this I tried to put the characters in poses and give them expressions that they might have within the two minutes of animation.

Tom

 

Bob 

Janice

Rough Character Concept Ideas

Here are the first drafts of character drawings based on the images in the mood boards. For each character I have tried different hair, clothing and body types to experiment with the look and try and find something I like.

I also want to add this picture of Michael Douglas from the movie Wall Street to the list of references. When drawing I referred to it a lot for both hair style and clothing inspiration.

Tom

 

Bob

 

Janice