Post 4 - Madagascar Character Designs

Initial character designs, these are what I have planned for my animation. I know that they may change slightly from critique and feedback, but I decided on these for the voices that I'm going to use in my animation.

The story is that a Captain and two other survivors are walking along a beach and the guy behind (the Navigator) is trying to apologise. Just as he's about to, he's interrupted as the Captain "shh's" him when he hears something. The Navigator then turns to the woman behind and complains. The woman tries to explain that the Captain is upset, but again the Captain "shh's" the woman to try and hear. The woman doesn't like this and tells him so.

This character is a "Captain" character, where he's a leader and in command of the group. He will be at the front leading the others as they walk. I chose a simple Royal Navy inspired design and a single trouser leg is ripped from the ship wreck. I gave him a stern look and cold blue hair to match.

This is the design for the Navigator. I gave him a head scarf and a neck scarf as the traditional sailor outfit has. His clothes were based a lot off the sailors from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7adnueZ2gZz_AmUpmL54ucsIwfQvnQbxV9G9c9Leg1W6__nkegu0UXOYG6tKAD_OXr_scpqtCZ_cC1MWvshyphenhyphenOLGflT1RtA_3echv2h9MUgdPaX6jp-QWl6QPV2HtMviwmSaq-3XM5dzSo/s400/01-2.jpg

I did however loose the stripe design as I felt that it was just a simple animation and I didn't want to complicate the process.

And this is the design for the woman, to whom I tried to give a soft appeal to her as well as make her a little bossy. I initially decided to have her hair pink, but I felt that it was a bit too outstanding, so I tried several different colours before settling for lilac. Her dress colour was also an issue, and I had thought of giving her a yellow dress, but again it was too outstanding and "in your face". I settled with red as it gives a feminine but bold personality. 

Post 3 - Madagascar Animatic

Here is the rough animatic using the images from my storyboard put to the sound file to test the timing:

Post 2 - Madagascar Storyboard

I have decided to go with the Madagascar sound clip for my animation piece as it's 11 seconds which isn't too long to animate, and it's a good piece to test out my expression skills. Although the Anchorman sound clip appealed to me, I felt that it was too long to do, and there were instances where I couldn't really think of what to think of when it can to actions, but mainly it was the time issue.

I have already made a start with the storyboarding, shown below.

Next I shall put the images into a rough draft animatic to see how it would look along side the sound

Post 1 - Proposal and Sound Clips for Animation

Proposal

Career Intentions
I would like to pursue a career as an animator working either for a small company or independently. I also like to try my hand at storyboarding and character designing so as I can keep my options open. I am happy to work with either Flash or Photoshop and use After Effects for finishing off. In other skills, I like to paint digitally  in my spare time and I am slowly getting better at drawing poses, but hopefully the work that I do this term will help build my skills on that.

Skills
I often sometimes think that I'm not very good at drawing, but as often as I say this, I am told otherwise. I personally like to work on poses and facial expressions. I am pretty good at animating in general, but I still have plenty to improve on.

Production Pipeline
This term, I plan to get better at animating and drawing in general. I would also like to work on building up to a third year film. I also want to get more involved with my friend's work so as I can gain more skills from their work too. I would like to start by looking into sound clips so as I can animate to them and imagine my own interpretation to the sounds.

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I looked around for sound clips that weren't too long but long enough to get some action into the piece, so here are a few sounds that I felt I could do:

Madagascar ("shh" between Marty, Alex and Gloria)

http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=bst&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Madagascar&quote=shushme.txt&file=shushme.wav

The first sound clip (Anchorman - Brian, Champ, Brick and Ron)

http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=82

The Grinch Movie (Forth clip "dare.wav")

http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=243

I think that there is opportunity for some great acting from these clips, but I feel that the Grinch clip is a little too easy because of the way Jim Carrey is so animated in his films, and I can't help but think of the same actions that he does, so I'll either go with Anchorman, a film which I haven't seen before, or Madagascar, where I could personify the animal characters to act out actions that only people could perform.