Project Animatic: Versions One and Two

 After a few delays over the past week, today was the day to which sound was added to our project's animatic. The outcome we are putting forward with our online greenlight. As the animatic shows, alongside other posts, our project now has a working title: Ravine. The above animatic is what we are currently considering our greenlight animation.

  Below is the first sound-added version presented in a group discussion. The animation itself was constructed from our storyboard by Vlad and Eva.

Another Logo Redesign

  As it turns out the logo I had designed last night was not up to scratch. However with a week to go before the OGR I do not believe there is time, along with everything else, to design a very different brand logo. I was therefore drawn to tweak elements of what had been designed such as the hue, the intensity and the font and icon sizes.

Logo Design Refinement

  Today I looked at polishing up Forge Studios' logo/title. I had initially looked into the idea of looking like metal, something that would genuinely look straight out of a gorge or smithy's mould. When it came to lighting I had the idea come to be that the light could be centred around the glow of the O. And to give more definition I added some edge lights within the interior of the letters.

  I chose to work on this one because this was the typeface the group was most agreed-upon with using. The flat-colour design looked a little formal so one of the aims of the name design was to inject some creativity back into the studio's visual design.

Another Storyboard Revision

  Over the weekend I have attempted to drum up a new storyboard for the narrative project currently underway. The reason the storyboard is now somewhat different is because it was felt that the last idea didn't feel entirely complete an idea.

There was some discussion over how expressive we should be making our fish. I feel I can work with primarily the eyes however when version 4.1 was discussed I was told that the fish was too expressive. Th the purpose of version 4.2 was to pare down the emotion so that the real emotional focus is in the eyes and perhaps the body language.

  I had worked late on version 4.1 which is why it is lacking in text and posessing a few arrangement anomalies, both of which were resolved for storyboard version 4.2

Storyboard Refinement: Two Fish Version Two

  After consulting with the group on the last version of the storyboard, we felt that the fish was too clumsy and the first one's story was a long adventure of him haplessly crashing into things. I looked back on what I had done and decided to rework the second half was well as move around some of the cuts of when the two narratives would switch.

  The sequence in the middle where both fish struggle to shake off the stuff that sticks on them. Is it good or bad that they are the same? Is it too repetitive or does it hint that both fish are heading down the same disastrous path?

New Storyboard Idea

  The narrative group had to restructure the story due to a lack of strength in our previous idea. But this idea might be a little more solid. It's not perfected, and some refinement over the weekend could really polish it up. One possible aim is to get the story ready for constructing the pre-vis by the coming week so that we can get to the construction of the animation proper.

  Our deadline is early December, which doesn't feel that far away when construction and final rendering has to be taken into account.

Experimenting With Colour and Saturation.

The new story framework features two fish; one living near the surface of the ocean and one living within a ravine in the ocean depths. The two of them are driven towards the "centre", the ocean floor. We considered the idea that both the bottom of the ravine and the waters that meet the surface are both "unknown" zones areas, they represent somewhere mysterious, possibly scary while the ocean floor is the point of knowing; it is familiar and inviting. 

One idea we had considered for style is that the deeper you go, the less saturated the world becomes. The depths of the ravine would be black and white while near the surface would be very bright colours. I made some very quick tests below for this to test how colour could be used within the project.

    Picture one uses a basic saturation gradient, with the point of knowing being the midpoint where everything is naturally toned. Nothing glaring but nothing too dull.

    Picture two uses a modified gradient. Here there is a banding of the saturation levels going on, with the mouth of the ravine being the threshold between colour and monotone. While the difference between the open ocean and seafloor saturation levels is also a little more tightened.

    Picture three uses the same banding as picture two, but there is also a brightness filter that sharpens the colour intensity of the ravine and the ocean surface with a more muted brightness around the seabed. The idea being that the brightness adds a certain "unreality" to the area they are in. The fish that live in these areas are also more familiar with their environments, so brightness could also suggest familiarity. The ravine may be dark, pitch-black even, but to the fish that lives down there it is familiar. To the fish there's nothing uncomfortable with simply being there and the environment could reflect that.

Narrative Project: Storyboard Idea

    We had some story ideas being passed around within the group so I looked into bringing the story we had into some coherence though the use of storyboarding. This is only a very basic idea; before a final storyboard can be submitted the story will need some refinement before we can solidify things like visual atmosphere or characters.

    Some of the panels could be tweaked, this is only a basic version and the ending might also need some work. The important thing was knitting together the story ideas we had into something coherent

All the flashback frames have been edged in blue to differentiate them from the present-day frames mainly for identification purposes. The technique is to see how smoothly the flashback  sequences fit into the overall story architecture.

Pufferfish Design Ideas

I decided today to do some concept art for the project's pufferfish protagonist. As far as is known to science the only known species of puffer that makes the patterns in the sand that so inspired us is Torquiguener albomaculosus, more commonly known as the Japanese white-spotted puffer.

     Although I have not entirely nailed down a specific design, I decided to make a pattern contact sheet. Even if this is not the form that sticks, I hope these designs can remain transferable. I looked into making something distinct and perhaps show our fish might be creative in some way. But because of the inspiration I also looked into making something that could be described as cute. So I'm not entirely satisfied with designs 1 2 and 3 on the upper panel.