Josh Gleaves

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CT6APME
Production Diary

Week 1
Unfortunately I missed the first week due to the switching of units, from Create Worlds.
Week 2
During week 2 I was slightly behind in terms of ideas and concepts, so my tutor thought it was best if
I just doodled some character ideas and see if I could come up with some sort of back story or
narrative which I wanted to go with.

Here are 2 concept designs that first came to mind, the first image is of a kind of undercover
cop/spy and I hoped to have a female protagonist. In the second image I was kinda of thinking of
other roles and possibilties the character could have, such as a ninja or cyborg. Also in the second
image I wanted to go for this kind of fluid, ambient black style to give a good contrast of good and
evil. For this effect I then looked at game covers such as Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy.

Week 3
After discussing my inspiration and the art style I wanted to take (in 3D) my tutor said it was a
difficult thing to do, but I beleived it would be approachable through toon shaders and after effects,
for this fluid like animation.
I further thought about my characters story and decided to do some character design sheets, being
heavily inspired by metal gear solids story and artwork.

Here are some drawings and concepts I

did, at first I was going for a spy like
character but it seemed to look more of a
scientist in a lab coat.

Week 4
During week 4 I worked on character designs further and also started with a storyboard and script,
however I felt I rushed into the whole idea, whilst I liked the style I began to dislike the character and
story. Here are further designs (unfinished) and the start of a storyboard. Overall I felt pretty under
the weather as I have done all this work only to scrap the idea.

Week 5
After Discussing with my tutor that I really didn't like my current idea he set me off again to draw
with haste and try and come up with an idea I can stick with. During this week a lot of struggling was
done to come up with an idea. Here are a few ideas I had:
Here is the first sketch I did, heavily inspired by
the anime Attack on Titan I wanted a character
weilding two swords perhaps in the style of
Cartoon Networks Storm Hawks.

Here I began to write down ideas that popped into

my head which seemed a good idea as an
animation. I looked at such things like: The end of
the world; War; Souls; Griffins; Mechs and even a
love story.
I really liked the idea of souls, and had a thought if
there were demons who roamed the earth stealing
human souls and devouring them. Going along with
this idea I needed a protagonist, so I decided to
create a protagonist with a 'special' kind of soul
and it couldnt be taken (perhaps even has an angel
soul).
After a bit of feedback on this idea, my tutor
suggested shadow demons who swarm and appear
in the darkness.

Pursuing the idea of shadow demons and souls, I quickly sketched

an idea of the protagonist being captured by these demons and in
line to have his soul consumed.
However it wasn't long until I began disliking this idea more and
more.

In this same week I began thinking about a swordsman who has lost a loved one and shadow
demons come for his lost ones soul from the grave. I wrote a script with the idea of it having lots of
action. However it became apparent that the type of story didn't need that much at all.

Week 6

During this week I further refined the idea of this swordsman and his lost one, however rather than
the idea of the swordsman fighting a lot of enemies I chose to only have one shadow demon who
wants the soul and then have others spawn at the end. I also drew out the storyboard which further
needed refinement during the digitalizing stage:
Receiving feeback for the story was a lot more promising and made me more confident in the idea,
much more than the previous ideas. Tweaks to the camera angles are to be made and more reaction
shots, but from this point I could start working on character designs, environment designs and
colour schemes.

I wanted a really basic colour pallette, as I wanted the idea to be good against bad the contrast of
white and black, light and darkness to be apparent. So really the colours on the wheel would only be
tints on the environment or maybe in the smoke effects in post-production.

Week 7

Starting work with character designs I was reluctant to start with the human as I find it harder to
come up with a strong protagonist so I decided to start witht the antagonist. Here I tried to go for a
simplistic style to the design as if I'm animated in 3D I want the viewer to stray away from looking at
my story in a realistic way. So I have decided to go for this simple, perhaps solid colour method.

To the right are inspiration for both

monster designs and my main character.

Week 8

During Week 8 I digitalised my storyboard and added scenes to help get a better story implemented.
Here we can see that I have changed from the first storyboard. The development of the idea at this
point was instead of the protagonist winning against the demon, he loses and gets banished to a
shadow realm with a bitter ending with the demon crushing his loved ones soul.
I changed a lot in this part of the process however I want to look at the parts in which I kept and
why. The idea of a graveyard was always swaying on my mind as to whether to keep it or not, but in
the end I thought it was a good choice for a setting as it surrounds the characters in the mood, and
lighting the scene will have a great part in the ominous scenary. I really like the crow scene and
where they splash onto the ground as I think this will display my style of 'fluidity' which is what I
wanted in the first few weeks.
The idea itself is to have a story without the use of voices which in this storyboard I think I can
achieve, using some of the shots in my storyboad I can create more tension with no speach.

However, once getting feedback on this I decided once again to change my idea. The feedback was
to perhaps have the human in actuallity be an angel.

In this week I also finished an environment design with moodboards for it to get inspiration and
different styles.

I also started my character

turnaround process, this one is
for the human character in the
animation. I also did some facial

design to get an idea of what the face might look like. However, in order to put these into an
animation they will need to be stylised. I used the same inspiration sheet as the demon.

As is

this a

secondary character and only in the animation for a brief time I will concentrate my time on other
aspects now.
Week 9

From Week 9 my idea changed once again, as the previous idea (Having an the protagonist be the
angel) it left questions of why an angel would bring flowers to a human grave? So instead of having 2
characters and the human turning into an angel I decided to have a third and separate character
which would be a standalone angel. For this to work many tweaks would have to made into the
story, script, storyboard and animatic. At this point I had started my animatic so I needed to change
it quite drastically. I also needed to create turnarounds for each of my characters, starting with the
demon as I already have an idea of what he will look like. Here you can see the turnaround which I
have tried to simplify the demon himself to what he might look like in the animatic.

An inspiration for how I want this character to move, especially in a fluid sense is Eris from Sinbad. A
really nice GIF can be seen here:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m065vyab5X1qi5jk5o3_250.gif

At this point in time it's very difficult to change an idea when you are so far into the process, but as
some shots and ideas were not adding up and they needed to be reconstructed in order for my
concept to be a solid idea. Here I started to gather images for inspiration for my angel design.

I really liked all these

concepts a lot especially
Tyrael in Diablo 3 (Top Left).
However, many of these
designs are highly detailed
and would not contrast my
demon. So in order for a
design to work I will work
along with the design I have
for the demon and oppose
it.
At this point in the preproduction I was struggling,
as I still didnt have a
definitive idea. In order to
get a good grade I had to
prioritise. Firstly, the script
needed to be completed so I
had a definitive ending.
Then I had to take what I
had of the storyboard and
turn it into an animatic and
complete it as fast as
possible.

A few weeks back there was a task to choose a scene from a movie and storyboard it out, almost
working in reverse. It is a good task which lets you breakdown Hollywood shots and include that
knowledge into my own work. For my scene I have chosen part of the 'Test Drive' scene from How to

Train your Dragon. Here is my storyboard for the film:

I wanted to complete this storyboard to a really good standard, so I spent a few weeks on it on the
side of my project. This is the style I want my final animatic to look like. This style I believe is a good
choice as you get a good sense of lighting and can easily distinguish characters from one another.
Week 10
During week 10 I got a bit nervous as the deadline was approaching fast. I spent this week
completing a final angel design and turnaround, and further adding to my animatic. Many changes
were made to the end of my animatic as I struggled to find an ending to my idea. In the end my tutor
and I thought a good idea was to have the angel beat the demon and have a corrupt soul end up in
heaven without the angel knowing, giving a twist to the storyline.
So from my inspirational mood board for my angel I begun to create a turnaround for him in the
same style as the demon.

Here I think I grasped the style pretty well as he goes with the theme of the demon.

I wanted my angel to seem powerful so I added almost rune like symbols, oozing with holy light to
his body. The main inspiration for this design was from a game called Dota 2, where a characters
'Arcana' looks similar to this. For the angel, this will be an ability in the animation where he activates

the powers, triggering him bonus strength. The idea behind this was to bring emphasis to his anger
at the demon taunting him with a soul.
Also in this week I designed an isometric view of what I hope my environment will look like
somewhat. This will be useful as when I start creating the 3D scene it will make the process a lot
easier.

Week 11
In this final week I dedicated my time to my final animatic and added some sound for the voices;
created concepts for assets; and any clean-up work that was needed to do. Here are some of the
asset designs I have done:

In terms of Assets there aren't that much that I have to create aside from trees and graves. I
designed these assets with my style in thought and I believe they turned out okay.
I also did a final concept design for my two characters showing the contrast between the demon and
angel.

To evaluate my process in this pre-production unit, I believe I tackled quite badly from the start. It
was definitely necessary to acquire a good storyline from the start as it has affected my working on
this unit drastically. My main problem was having confidence in my ideas, I believe the reason why I
chose my final idea was because I have a definitive good versus evil, light versus dark. So I could then
base and expand a story from that. My final animatic I believe shows promise, however I dislike the
way I went about in creating it. I wish now if I could go back instead of creating it inside of flash I
would create each frame in Photoshop, as it gives a nicer finish and is easy to manipulate layers.
Also, I made the mistake of creating my entire animatic in one flash file, this made it difficult to edit
in some scenes. This then caused delays in my work time and I believe had an effect on my final
product. Overall, I have learned that it is extremely important to work to the process of preproduction. I learned first-hand that it is a waste of time diving into an animatic when you dont have
a clear view of the story, and this is also relevant to production. I believe if I was to do this unit
again, I would have a completely different story, and with the knowledge I have learned from the
unit would provide much stronger products.