As this is my last year at university, I have been given the task to create a short animation for my final major project. The ideas and development of the project have already been done and the sketchbook handed in and marked.
All of my initial and finalised character designs for this project can be viewed on my 'Character Design' page under the title 'Monday's Special: The Untapped Goldmine'.
Beatboards, storyboards and colour scripts for the animation can be viewed on my 'Sequential Art/Storyboards' page.
The title for my final piece is 'Monday's Special: The Untapped Goldmine', the story revolves around a 12 year old boy, called Rafferty Nye, he is debating whether or not to enter the schools show and tell competition, but without an exceptional object for entry he rethinks the whole idea. One evening he is eating fish fingers for tea, and comes up with the great idea to find the fish with fingers and enter the competition!
The next day, Rafferty asks around town about this mystical fish, but all efforts fail when he is told the fish with fingers does not exist. With that in mind, Rafferty is upset and wants to be alone, he sits on a bench on the boardwalk and looks out to sea - suddenly from the beach below he hears a loud machine start up, he peeps through the boards to investigate. To his delight, the machine below is a 'Fish Finger Making Machine' - Rafferty rushes to the beach below to get a closer look.
The inventor of the machine is one, Clyde Cason, as Rafferty approaches he is stood at the edge of the water with a fishing rod waiting for his next catch. Rafferty explains that he has been searching high and low for this fish, this makes Clyde proud knowing that somebody is interested in his role and what he does for the community - the pair talk for hours striking up a friendship over the fish with fingers.
From the very beginning I planned for this story to be told as a digital 2D animation produced using ToonBoom Harmony, as opposed to being 3D, stop motion or traditional 2D.
The first thing I wanted to get done with the animation was the background plans - with these being created first I could do the rough animations over the top to get a feel for timing, composition and fluid movement within the environments, then once all of the plans are done I can go back over and clean up each scene and add a splash of colour.
Below is a small selection of rough background scenes I have produced so far:
The images show the transition of the environments through the story in order, from the kitchen scene all the way to the boardwalk scene.
The images were created in Photoshop and my plan is to animate the characters over the top, making it look as if they are interacting naturally within the space.
The next stage in the production process is to animate the characters rough scenes using these environments - from that point I will begin my clean up and colour.
The environment designs, both rough and finalised, will be uploaded to my 'Environment Design' page once they are completed.
I hope you enjoy watching the production of this animation unfold as much as I am enjoying making it!
Comments