WATER TEST

I was talking to my brother Paul (who works as a lighter/compositor) about my short. He asked me what water effect I was going to do for the sword shot. I told him that I was probably just going to animate some 2D bubbles to show that it's water. In a couple of minutes he sent me this and I instantly was grateful and inspired. Hopefully he can help me out with other little things like this.
Thanks Paul.

MOVING ON TO A NEW SCENE

Well here's a background from another scene in my short. Something a little a little warmer than a dark forest.


1. Rough layout

2. Colour key

3. Clean up line

4. Final colour background.

BACKGROUND NUMBER DEUX

As I promised I'm posting more often and it seems like people really favour how I'm posting my process while I work.
So here's another background for my Harry Potter spoof short.



1. This is my rough layout to get an idea of where everything will be placed in the shot. You can see that I drew the character in this as well. I have to draw him in to make sure I'll have enough room for him and still see everything else that's going on. I also drew the background a little wide as well because in this shot there will be a camera move. So I made sure to leave room
for that to happen.

2. The colour key: a rough representation of the mood and colour palette for the shot.

3. The cleanup drawing to make sure I have a nice clean guide to paint in.

4. And the final piece. For those of you Harry Potter fans out there. You can clearly see what scene I'm going to
be spoofing by this painting.

PAINTING THE BACKGROUNDS

Over the past two nights I painted the background for scene 1 of my Harry Potter Short.
For those of you that are at all interested in my process when I paint here it is.
From the bottom up.


1. Drew a rough thumbnail sketch of the shot to get the layout the way I wanted.
2. Painted a colour key which is a very rough, simple, low detail painting that describes the colour
palette and explore the mood of the shot.
3. I then drew a tighter, cleaner line drawing so I could have a better guide to paint. Think of it as a colouring book.
It's a guide so I'll stay in the lines and not go too far off the original idea.
4. Then layer by layer I painted all the different elements of the shot. This is the middle ground where the majority of the action
will take place.
5. And finally here's the final background as it will look in the short which I will animate on top of.

REDESIGNING.

On second thought after looking at the designs that I posted last night I decided that because my short is a comedy,
my designs were way too generic and not cartoony enough. So I went back today and redesigned Harry as well as
Hermione and Voldemort. Hopefully you like the changes.

YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

So now that I've got all the equipment ready to go I'm finally starting to work on my own
animated shorts. I'm starting off with something simple and quick so I can learn all the software needed
to complete a short. I'd rather do it that way then jump right in and find out something doesnt work
on a really complicated piece. As my first short I'm doing a little parody/spoof on Harry Potter.
All the HP films are so inspiring to me and I can't get enough of them. So it'll be a fun way to familiarize myself
with the process again.
Here's my first pass at designing Harry for my piece.
Check back soon because I'm going to start posting more often.