Beginning to piece together all the parts of the puzzle now. Editing the audio is taking longer than I anticipated due to the differences in volume and quality of the tracks. In the meantime I've been working on the Poma and 2D Maya tutorials as I will be using these techniques in my final animation. I've also been working on the character designs using the drawings my children have made. I'm hoping to produce 3 characters, though they will be quite simple and most of the detail will come in the facial movements. Alan suggested I look at a programme called nDo which will help me with texturing. Below are a few of the drawings I've copied from the kids' artwork and I'm going to make an amalgamation of my favourite features. For example, I like the hair of number 1 and the eyes of number 4. Lucy seems to have a thing for drawing her people in high heels so I think this is something I need to include! Any comments on these would be greatly received. I've also shown how I am working on them in Photoshop to achieve a 'drawn' effect as if the children have drawn them themselves. I'm creating the facial features in different layers as in the Poma facial rigging tutorial so I can animate in the same way.
Finally here are a couple of the audio tracks that I've edited. I see the 'Lions & Cows' one as part of a section about animals. Lucy will introduce it and almost be interviewing her little sister Alice about her favourite animals. I'm hoping to animate a little 'Alice' in an animal costume with childlike drawings of the animals being "friends" and "not being nice to each other" as you can hear in the audio. The 'Star Wars' one I could see as Emily trying desperately to talk about one of her favourite films with her smallest sister running around in the background shooting Lucy who, being a bit girly and princessy, is most unimpressed about all of it. Feedback welcome!
Haha :) I really like the Lions & Cows - though I do think you might need to have 'subtitles' appear alongside the spoken word on screen - I think this could be a nice feature too - kids' handwriting-style - just because it's not always crystal clear what the little one is saying. Don't think this is a problem, I think it could be a plus. For me, the Star Wars one is less engaging, just because it lacks the surrealism of the little one's chats, and I just think, conceptually, that it makes more sense to be about the little one - like it's her show.
ReplyDeleteLove the high heels detail - for me, the really appealing iterations are 1, 4 & 7 :)