Strange

Forgot I had this, it was a t-shirt I found not too long ago that is strangely similar to our idea.

Layoutage

I roughed out some layout on a few shots a while back... so here is what I've got:

Shot 100:
Start shot framed on lower half of scene, and dolly up. Tree and sloping foreground hill draw eye to alpacas, while background hills guide eye to "asteroid."

Shot 140/160:
Super close-up. Strong rim lighting. Perhaps an even lower camera angle, looking up more. Putting robot off-center and at an angle draws the eye to the right side of the frame, where it needs to be in the next shot (150).

Shot 150:
Background hills form a "V" pointing to alpacas (still needs some filler on left half of frame). Robot rises up, occluding almost the entire frame.

Color Collage

This is another test where I'm trying to nail down the color palette. I took images from the interwebs and cut them out to form the shapes, also giving texture to each object. It's really tough to get the right balance of the pinks, peaches, browns, and yellow-greens... but this is getting there. Unfortunately, some of the saturation was lost in making the image web-ready.

Animaticiacs. . .

. . . and they're zany to the max.

Rough Paint-overs

We started talking about color palettes, and we all really liked the matte painting (below) from a short called Cocotte Minute, by a group at Gobelins in France (www.cocotteminute.net). Josef Albers is hard at work here, because when you sample the colors in Photoshop, the pink sky is actually more of a peach, the purple on some of the flowers is actually red, and so on.


So... I did a few quick paint-overs of the tree/hill, with this this color pallette as inspiration.

Early Shading Test

This is an early test that I did with some shading on the tree. I wanted to see how well it would disguise the cowlicks that aren't on the silhouette of the tufts... and it does a pretty good job for a static camera.

Alpaca Time

So, it's time to start the alpaca model. Here's what it would look like in a 2 dimensional world from a perfectly orthographic view.

Frenchies at it again

This short is from ESMA in France, and it has some cool lighting and effects, but the main reason I posted it is because of the kids' hair. It was modeled as tufts, and each individual tuft was animated, much like we plan to do on the alpacas.



Higher res available on their site: www.hugh-lefilm.com.

And this one is from the same school. It has some sweet cuts and transitions, but towards the end there are some really nice rock formations that we might be able to draw inspiration from.



Higher res available on their site: www.junglejail.com.

Another Environment

In the same vein as Jonathan's previous post, I painted an environment concept using most or all of the characteristics that we have discussed. As far as finalizing an environment, we are at the point where we agree upon the shapes and physical characteristics of the environments. We have yet to finalize a "look and feel" that is unique and something that we'd be proud of. Stay tuned for more reference on color palettes and texture.

Photoshopped Environment

Here's an attempt at putting all of our environment concepts together in the same composition. We all like the trees and hills, but the rocky undersides of the cliffs are still being discussed.