Camp Grounds - Concept Art

For the going live project, I came up with an idea for one of the pitches, I found myself drawing several pieces in order to sell the pitch at the presentations, in order to do this I created the above concept art, I made it highly detailed with photoshop and several filters and effects to ensure it was appealing as possible for the client to choose. The above pictures show the process in which I worked to design this concept art, by starting with outlines and then adding in colour,before moving onto the next piece, I used a grass brush in order to create the ground which looks really realistic and welcoming, the orange/yellow glow was strategically added in to create a warm glow to the drawing, to better sell the idea.

Stag Keeping Guard

This is the storyboard for the main stag that is keeping guard over the deer grazing at the bottom of the hill, it stands at the top, watching side to side to ensure it sees prey before they get too close, at the end the stag catches a glimpse of the wolf mother approaching and lets out a might roar in order to warn the other stags. I did not draw the background of this scene, as previously stated, I will be drawing the entire environment in the future for the animatic, this will save me a lot of time having to re-draw the same background over and over, I will instead add these storyboards on top of the entire environment drawing for the animatic.

Wolf Running

This storyboard shows the wolf mother's movement after she hears her baby crying, unable to complete her hunt and worried for her child as she is alone and not with a pack, she rushes back at high speed, in order to protect her cub, I drew a simple view of the background on no.1 so that I am able to remind myself, in the future, when drawing the environment to ensure that it is the same as previously designed and visualised. I could have made these storyboards more detailed in various ways such as drawing the background in all 13 movement frames, another possible way would be to draw more detail on the wolf's body such as fur direction and muscle flex/relax.

Rigging Week 1 - Creating Joints

In this week of friday maya classes with Sean, we had rigging class,  we started with creating joints throughout the entire body on the left hand side before mirroring it on the opposite side, some of the tips we learnt was changing the orientation angles of the joints to match that of the movement of the corresponding body parts e.g. fingers were straight pointing out, but the thumb was at a 45 degree angle pointing down and out, this was so that when the joints in the thumb bend, they would mimic that of real life movement.
I found myself ahead of the class, as I have previously created many rigs in the past for my undergraduate study, so I got ahead and started on IK handles for the feet and elbows

Pup Wake & Cry

This is a storyboard that shows the animation cycle of the wolf pup waking up and howling for its mother who has left to go hunting, these drawings show the movement of the wolf and the actions it is doing, I added in shading to highlight the fur but also the curves of the body and face, this was to ensure that when creating this in 3D this reference would be accurate and visually distinguishable.

Wolf Sneaking/Hunting

this is a short visual representation of the hunting movement the wolf mother will be doing in the animation, as it slowly tracks the deer to their grazing place, the wolf can be seen looking up over the surroundings in attempts to catch a glimpse of its prey before going back towards the ground to follow their scent.
 This drawing was created to show the movement of the wolf during this animation, there is little detail in the shape and muscle structure, if I have more time available in the future I will come back to this drawing and add in shading to show the bending and extruding of the bones as well as the flexing and relaxing of the muscles.

Deer Grazing

This is a more detailed breakdown of the deer grazing cycle, this particular deer will be eating grass, while slowly moving around to get to the lush green tasty grass, I have created a detailed representation of its movement and the leg movements which will be key when making the animation, I have not drawn the ground of the environment, in the near future I will create a more detailed sketch of the entire environment that all the deer will be grazing in, this is so that I can focus on the more important aspects, instead of drawing the same background over and over with slight variations

Deer Design

This is a detailed design of the fantasy style deer, they are showing grazing and relaxing, the deer will have green/brown antlers which will spring forth flowers at the tips, this design was inspired from other fantasy concept art, also because my project is set on a different planet, I believed that there should be some variation to the animals and making a consistent art style. The art style I decided on was animals are more in tune with nature and because of the climate and environment, plants and flowers grow from the bodies of the animals.

Pup Design - Howling

 This drawing was made in an attempt to show the wolf cub sitting down while howling with its face up, the proportions and angle of the drawing are not completely accurate which is why it does not look as good as it should, If I get the chance in the future I will re-draw this image with a better perspective to ensure it does not confuse the viewers eyes, but for the time being I will not include it within my designs.

Pup Design - Scratching

This is a quick sketch of a wolf pup in the middle of scratching itself, this will be a main part of the pup's animation cycle, it will be seen resting and scratching itself, being carefree, this drawing emphasises on the fur and the direction in which it is moving away from the body. Due to the angle of the pup some of the detail is hard to distinguish, I will ensure in the future when re-creating my storyboards that this is rectified and made clearer.

Wolf Design

The original design of my character had changed from a werewolf style to a normal wolf on all fours, this was due to the fact that the previously made 3D wolfman model was just not good enough. This drawing is a detailed look at how the wolf will stride in the final animation, the colour of its eyes and the length of its tail, emphasis has been added on the muscles around the legs and the spine bones to show the shape of the wolf