Story!

It's still really rough, but I wanted to put up here since it's been awhile since we talked about it.

HOW WISHES COME TRUE

The story starts at night with a kid in some situation (lonely or something) when they look to the sky and see a shooting star. They make a wish.

This wish shoots to the sky and and latches onto the star. As the star finishes it's journey it is collected by some creature. The wish goes to the place where wishes are processed by a wishmaster (or grantfather). There are also creatures that clean up the discarded wishes that are not going to be granted.

One of the creatures sees the child's wish and empathizes with their situation. Maybe the creature is lonely too. It decides to try to get the wish granted.

The wishmaster takes the wishes to the star where they get granted, and the little creature decides to venture there too. But the journey get hard. He doesn't make it, but he finds out that the child has managed to make the wish come true on their own.

Theme?

I was thinking about the theme of the story, since that's what we have had trouble with. For me, the core idea is that some wishes aren't meant to be granted. Some things you have to work for to achieve. Now that I have some time I want to refine some of the plot points, but that's the gist of it.

I put up some images from Nocturna, which was one of my major sources of inspiration and I really love the art style. Also, some idea sketches about the little wish creature. I wrote some notes on him. I think he would be really fun to animate.

Francesco Giroldini

http://giro3d.blogspot.com/

After the Rain

Old Character Sketches

These aren't really character designs, they were just some sketches to explore character ideas I did awhile ago for the old story. Just wanted to start a little more brainstorming.

Cool stuff we might need to learn!

Cool stretchy stuff in Maya. For beautiful skinning and deformation.



And 3D Coat. For Sculpting and topology.



Campion tested this program out and said its really easy to pick up and he went from opening the program for the first time to modeling to retopologizing and unwrapping in a few hours.


This program is volex sculpting (volumetric pixels), so no worries about polys stretching and poly count. It also has an auto re-topology with user defined guides and auto unwraps. You can also paint textures on the model in it and light it.

Inspiration!

Just in case people are starting to feel a little spent. These are some pieces by Skottie Young, a Marvel comic artist who is working on a retelling of the Wizard of Oz comic series.

His blog is http://www.skottieyoung.com/

New take on story

Please leave comments about ideas for the beats

Story Beats & Preliminary "C"

A:

Girl and Boy isolated

B:

Interactions

· Close Minded

· Provoke

· Retaliation

Chase

· Blending Imaginary worlds

· Face off

· Boy and Girl pulling on the boy’s animal

Crisis

· Animal rips in two

o Back to Reality

· Fix Animal

C:

The World expands when you open up to friendship

Working on the Story

Here is where we are at with the story:

Characters:
Boy and pirate Monkey
Girl and princess Bunny


----
A
Whose story is it?
Boy

B
How to get from A-C?
Boy's imagination is interrupted
Monkey steals Bunny's crown with hook
Girl is dragged into Boy's world
Chase through the "playground"
Boy drops Monkey
Girl grabs Crown, Boy grabs Monkey
Pull back and forth
Monkey's arm rips off
Boy is sad
Girl uses Bunny's ribbon to tie Monkey's arm back on

C
Why are we telling the story?
Its an important message on how two unlikely friends compromise and learn to be friends and play along.
Whats the point?What are we trying to say?
To accept others for their differences, friendship brings great joy
What does the boy want?
Adventure, Control, Treasure
How do we want the audience feel?
"Awwww, how sweet. So cute! Let's watch it again!"
----



Beats to change in and out of the imaginary world:

Open with epic imaginary ocean scene
Girl interrupts imagination to bring back to reality
Chase sequence begins and they run off into their imaginary world
Monkey's arm rips, bringing them back to reality
They walk off together in their imaginary world

More kids and stuff

I figured I would post something since it's been awhile. These were some brainstorming sketches I was doing for projects, but most of the ideas I thought up for these characters were too involved for 20 secs of animation.

Merry Christmas!

Kids in winter jackets

These are some of the development sketches I did for story board class. Inspiration!

just ran across this

found this while i was browsing some blogs, a good story starter...

Baker

A fun little set of characters

Mr. Erik D. Martin

Here's the link to his blog :)
http://caffeineartist.blogspot.com/

This was on the Paperwalker site. Wings For Roger video is pretty cute and the design is pretty fun.

Story Starters..

WTF is he poking!?!?!?



Another idea I had for a story starter was...Brothers, Video Games, Jealousy

More Styles

Here a few styles of drawing I found intriguing.

http://www.domitille-collardey.com/rubriquedynamique/?p=339

http://www.hellociaran.com/swim.html

Free to Fly

I just saw this (longish) short on deviantart. The animation is not that impressive, but the story is kind of interesting, I think. I mostly like the concept of the kids imagining their toys are alive and also the topic of dealing with peer pressure and growing up is a fair conflict for a kid, I think. Anyway, see what you think :]

In the spirit of the fall season and Harry Potter...

Story Starter?

My sketch for the week :]

Summer Sketches

Here are some character designs I did over the summer. Thought I would post them for inspiration :)

Out of Sight.

I just found/saw this little gem.  Wonderfully simple story and beautiful animation.  Enjoy!

Virginie Izoulet

I came across this dude's blog a few days ago. It's kind of a fun style.

http://viiiiz.blogspot.com/

Cool texture

Hey guys :]

Just thought I'd share something I found over on Zbrush Central. I think it's a really interesting style... using zbrush to do some normal mapping, we could even make the characters look like hand-made which might be an interesting effect. Kinda like clay-mation :D It would certainly be unique, I think! Anyway, just thought I'd post it cause I think it's pretty cool whether we use it or not :]

Training!

Hi everyone!

Aside from making the story, in the meantime we should consider watching some videos online (tutorials) to learn how to rig. This is a demo of a guy's rig:




This one is pretty cool too!:



Let's make sure to be ready for next year and do something really good! So if you guys have any tutorial out there let everyone know so we can learn from people.

Also it doesn't have to be all rigging...Rendering, lights, modeling and other tutorials would be useful. Let's get ready to get better before the big show!

This is another way of mixing 2d and 3d. The 3d is the "real world" and the 2d is the "story world". Just posting other examples of mixing these nicely!

Love this

I don't know if y'all have seen this. Its kinda creepy but cute. And I really like the character design and the look of it.

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Finnish Music Video

Here's the Finnish Music Video I told you about. Enjoy!