Concepts and Art

finally after a bit of a delay, are the first concepts and art for my short animation.


TEDDY BEAR

Not much to do in terms of design and development considering I'm just going to buy a Teddy Bear for my puppet, but anyway here is the sort of typical archityple bear i'm going for. I'ts an instantly recognisable and familliar to people.
( CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE )






ENVIROMENTS AND BACKGROUNDS


FOREST

This is for the opening scene where Teddy finds himself waking up in a dark frightening forest alone and confused.

Original drawing



Digitally Enhanced

Some light colouring and lighting were added to enhance the atmosphere of the scene. The glowing light in the horizon and orange skies in particular hellp achieve this.



Final(ish) Scene

Here I added some contrast and tone as well as more shading to really set the mood.




JUNGLE

For the Jungle scene i really wanted to make it thick and dense looking, to give a sense of truly being lost.




CITY STREETS

Research 2 [ Imagery ]

Its been a while since my last post, due to the fact that i havn't been able to connect to the the web, but here are some late images that inspired my vision for mt animation. I've been looking at huge variety of pictures and illustrations from Gears OF War to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
Actual concept art and storyboards for my animation will be up next week when I manage to get access to a scanner.

DIVINE COMEDY

Alighieri's epic poetry The Divine Comedy features some fantastic black and white engraved etcchings.



Cantos I and II Dante find himself in a dark forest. The trees are withered and ominous. Its a dark and eiree scene.






This is the same atmosphere I want to Capture in the opening scene of my animation When the Teddy wakes in a dark frightening forest,lost and afraid.

GEARS OF WAR

The xbox 360 title features some rather brilliant artwork. The pictures of Fenix Estate in particular caught my eye. The drab grey colours and sky give the pictures an isolated and lonely feel. I want to put a huge monolithic, empty mansion in my film for Teddy to wonder around. Is there anything more somber than a huge empty house?


Fenix Estate











HALO 3 ODST

Halo 3 features some really rugged and industrial looking location artwork that i want to base the city scene around. The buildings and architecture are ugly and could, an unwelcoming enviroment for a lost Teddy Bear.




The empty and desolate city streets are filled with a feeling of isolation, something I need to be able to portray in the film, as its pivotal the theme.







JAMES CAMERON'S AVATAR

Avatar is filled with beutifully lush jungle scenes and wildlife. As a contrast to the dark woods and deserted city streets, I want to include a jungle scene to show that this bear has indeed traversed the world in search of his home.

BBC Project [ Research 1 ]

A.I. ( Artificial Intelligence )

First thing i decided to look at was the source and inspiration of my idea, the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. ( Artificial Intelligence ). Its long been one of my favourite films, and the robotic toy "Teddy" is one of the best characters, despite only being a toy in the movie. His facial expressions and voice are brilliant, and really add so much charm and humanity to somethig thats essentialy just plastic, cloth and wires. "Teddy" and David. The relationship between Teddy and David ( who is also a prototype robot child ) is fascinating. Despite the fact they are both just machines, they create an unusual bond no different from a real child and their teddy bear. This is mostly to do with how brilliantly Speilbeg has represented them both in the movie. You cant help but feel sorry for Teddy when he gets seperated from David and stuffed in a box. Because he was done so well, I was surprised to find Teddy has a wide-spread fanbase around the world, with tribute videos to him on youtube that refer to teddy's finest moments as a "Saga".

Teddy and David

I want to try and achieve this level of humanity in my starring Teddy, because if he's flat and emotionless he wont really have any effect on the viewer. Affecting the viewer with by being "sentemental" and "touching" will be pivotal for this project because its how I want to get the message across that a child can have a special bond with a Teddy-bear, as they usually have them from a young age (sometimes even from birth)and they stay with them throught their life as a sentimental and very personal object. Buy giving it a convincing sense of humanity, hopefully i'll be able to represent a teddy bear as being more than just a mear object to a child, but as a companion and friend.

BBC Project [ Introduction ]

BBC asked a bunch of us animators here at Norwich to make 30 second shorts to promote their upcoming collaberation with the Britich Museum. Its all about iconic objects throughout history and how they affected society, as well as their history and significance in the world. We could choose any object we wanted, and tell its story.

I've only just started this blog as a sort of online skethbook that gets regularly updated and that can be followed and accessed anywhere. As a result I have already gathered some research material, so I'll sort of be working backwards.
After finally settling on my chosen object for the BBC project, i went about looking into various teddies and stuff. I looked at images and films that feature teddies, and how they were prepresented in them. I'll be posting that stuff soon!