Final Design Layout

As many of you may know, Sunday was the deadline for me to pick a solid design (provided by my wonderful layout crew) for the trees in the forest for the film. Pretty much everyone tackled the challenge, but only one could be chosen.

Everyone pulled a good run, but I had to go with the idea that followed the directions I gave the closest and shared my vision for the film. The design is by Kyle O'Neill.


Ignoring the color, this was basically what I was going for. It is simple without being too distracting and is strong and solid enough to be repeated and overlapped.

Through the process of submissions, I couldn't help but feel like the communication between the layout crew and I could have been stronger. So to keep everyone on the same page, I drew this sketchy, unofficial representation on how I would like everyone to deal with the layouts as they play in perspective:
Note that the layouts for the film are going to just be line art. I did this in color so you all will have a rough idea of how your layouts will be treated, complete with a little Aidan (note: it is not correctly to scale). Also note how the bottoms of the trees fade into the ground, but still receed as the trees go back. In case you cannot see it due to the knots, here is an idea of how the layering will work:


Most of you will only have 2-4 layers to your scenes. Do not draw in the fog, but if there is water in your scene you should show how the layers recede into space the same way you would the trees (remember water will be animated, but it is for the benefit of the animators).

A few of you at the meeting were asking me about branches. I was worried about it becoming too busy if each layer had branches, so I discovered this could be avoided (and still have the visual success the branches give) if only the first layer of trees had branches. In the example, they are designed to make Aidan the focus, and I would encourage all my layout artists to think along those lines with composition in mind. Remember: your layout (though extremely important) is not the star. The characters are the stars.

Normally I wouldn't put art-related announcements for the crew on this blog, but I would like to keep all of this in one simple package so we can refer back to it later.

More Pitch Posters?

Now that I have a team of animators and layout artists working on the group, a lot of my attention has been focused on just story and animation. I don't necessarily feel comfortable just yet putting work up on this blog that isn't mine - but I'll do my best to keep the blog updated.

The animatic itself is finished and for a little break, I started tinkering around with the pitch poster again. A few people mentioned that the second version of the first poster wasn't as successful, so I played around a bit more. Let me know what you think!

Mood Setting Design

With a possible background painter volunteering her wonderful services, I post up this collection of photos that I found that I felt best fit the mood or lighting of certain scenes in the film.

Finalized Designs

Been finishing the character designs for the Banshee and the boy, whom I've named Aidan. This is a size comparison that is in the character sheets I finalized. After all the research, I decided the original designs (minus some significant tweaks) are the most simple and efficient.

Running Around Research

Long story short, I started doing research to better solidify the character sheets and i found out my original research on my character designs were not that accurate. Turns out I had been dressing both my banshee and the boy (whom I have named Aidan) around 1800s when banshee lore was actually more frequent around the 1400s.

So a few more days of research later, and I found the original dress the natives of ireland wore in the 1400s. Unfortunately, they don't lend themselves to very attractive silhouettes.

I did a quick line up to show how far my character designs have gone over the past few months, the last being what was supposed to be common dress in the 1400s:

Getting kind of nervous about how I would deal with the plaid as well. Too much detail in pattern can make clean up 10x slower.

Forest Research

So research is under way, which means one crucial and exciting thing: the designs are officially being drawn.

After a well-deserved consult with the lovely Lexy Poston, we've finally started getting a good background layout design. As requested, I've looked up a few Ireland-related wild life that I thought would be inspiring to have in the film.

Next is the diagram to how these beautiful works of nature will apply to each scene. If only my scanner was working, I could have them up to tonight. Darn technology... Well here's a slideshow of said plants so you can pretend you're not sitting at home in front of a computer screen.

Backgrounds and Animatic

I have been doing some research and sketches as far as what I want the backgrounds to look like. The scene is set in 1800 Ireland. I regrettably have not been there myself, but I have found images from several beautiful forests in Ireland and I'm mixing my favorites together to create the setting for the film.

This image was inspired from a photograph I found where the forest was covered in moss. In the film, this is where the boy will hear the woman singing and curiously begin heading toward. Because of cinematography reasons, I had to flip my original image for the animatic, which turned out like so.

It is vectorized and simplified for use in the animatic, but essentially the same idea.

Sneek Peek of the Character Sheets

The character sheets, for my Concept class, have been finished. I feel like I'm going to be doing them again to be more clear under a less rushed environment.

Here's a peek on what the characters are ideally going to look like for the film.

Further Concepts and Guest Art

More rough work with character designs for the film. Even though I'm not completely satisfied with them, I'm being forced to finish them up and make character sheets for my class's sake. The sheets are still in progress.

I wanted them to remain simple, so I'm asking my friend Stephanie Wang to translate some of the characters in her style to help. In my efforts to be as big of a distraction to her life as possible, I got this pitch poster out of her.

Ginger or Irish?

My first dealings with the male character were a little rough. Dealing with the contrast of shapes with the banshee's oval face and giving him a square face, I began trying facial features on him using the ideal style I wanted the characters to be in.

I began experimenting with how the character would be broken down for the animators as well.

Banshee Concepts

These are the concept pieces for the Banshee character, who hadn't been named yet. All of them were drawn in my Concept class and shown to my professor as proof that I was working on her.