Concept Art

This is concept art idea for what the stairwell might look like, its just the bottom of the stairwell but you get the idea of what style I'm going for. nice muted colours and a hard wood banister, I might even add some gravity on the walls to, just to make it seem a little less nice.

Just some simple sketches of some basic rooftops

Below I have drawn out a 2 point perspective sketch of a building, it's just an early idea of what my building for the environment will look, I've gone for a very simplistic style and classic new york type building, with the fire escape down the side of the building.

Some more building concept art, I have done a much wider building with rectangular shaped windows and an arched doorway, which I think looks very New York, which I'm aiming for.

Work in progress of colouring the building above 

For what's going to be in the scene, I've basically drawn out a quick birds eye view sketch, below.

This will help me plan out where everything is going and how many buildings I need to model. On the left hand side (the empty side of the pavement) I'm going to have some basic modelled buildings so it looks like a real and convincing street.

From my Plan above, I've done a perspective sketch, of what the street will look like with all the buildings drawn out, as you can see below.

Here is my finished, "Building#1" Concept design, I've gone for a quite old fashioned looking New York building. With the reddy brown and grey brick colours and old stoney archway for the door, which I think gives it character.

The rough sketch of the street, I am going to upload into Photoshop, and colour over the top to get the same painting style I have above. Here is my work in progress of the street view so far. I have just rescaled and tweaked the picture above to fit in the painting, because I really want this design in my final environment.

Here's more work in progress, I think I might mute the colours more on the building second form left because I feel it doesn't fit in with the rest.

Below is my finished concept for my little street environment, the cubes on the right and left ends of the street  are just going to copies of the current buildings because you won't really see them in the final animation.

Here is a front view of the buildings I am going to use, the brown building on the left is the "building#2" which the character jumps onto the rooftop of this building. I like the toned down colours of the buildings makes them very subtle and won't drag attention away from the characters.

And under is design for the stairwell, I wanted it to look quite old and a little run-down, so it adds to tense atmosphere. 

Final Idea

The Chase

• Starts off with one character running up the stairs in a stairwell, the character is constantly looking back over his shoulder.
• He doesn't see the person in front of him with some shopping bags and runs straight into them, making them stumble, dropping the contents of the bags on the floor and down the stairs.
• The runner looks at the person, gesturing a sorry face, but keeps on running up the stairs, until he reaches the roof exit door.
• The runner comes out of the door, checking over his shoulder anxiously, he keeps running until he reaches the end of the rooftop, he looks down, the height scares him causing him to take a stumbly step back.
• The runner then hears a loud bang, so he looks behind and sees the guy that's been chasing him standing at the rooftop exit door. The guy looks at the runner intensely and then starts running towards the runner.
• So the runner takes a few steps back, takes a deep breath looks back at the guy chasing him and then starts running towards the end of the roof, Jumping across. (dramatic and slow motion)
• The runner makes it across diving into a forward roll on to the next roof top.
• The runner gets up and looks back at the guy and does a little sarcastic wave, and walks to the end of the rooftop.
• The other guy looking angry muttering and jabbering under his breath at the runner.
• The runner carefully climbs down the fire escape from the top of the roof, and gets down to the pavement looking all smug with himself.
• The runners doing a little happy walk along the street, until he comes to the corner and the chaser guy walks out in front of him.
• The guy stands there and intensely stares at him for a few seconds, until he raises him arm to the runner, then quickly taps him on the shoulder and shouts "TAG" and runs off in the opposite direction.
• Leaving the runner being like "nooooo" in a dramatic way. 

(Style)

For the style I wanted it to be set in New York, and have the tall building's with the fire escapes running down the front of the building. I've put a collage/mood board together of some rooftops that I like.

And below is a collage of a few images I found on the internet, mostly from from Tumblr and Flickr, there quite rural and abandoned stairwells and cold and made from concrete.

Some more stairwell collaging, more warm and inviting than the last one.

  

Idea's

Idea's

For my personal project, I would really like to do some character animation, using a rigged character for autodesk maya, and model/texture the environments myself. And animate along to a nice comedic story which would attract all ages. Here's some Idea's I've came up with, below....

The Boy In the Spaceship (Idea#1)

• There's a little boy in an arcade, playing in a space rocket ride, making like "ZOOM" and "POW" noises.
• He then looks out of the window and starts to see aliens walking past and see's the moon surface and the stars in space.
• The little boy sees one particular alien heading towards him and he gets very frightened, so he leaves the spaceship and runs (bouncing because of being on the moon)  from the scary alien
• Then the alien catches up to him and jumps at him, the little boy looks back and lets out a "GASP!" 
• It fizzles back to reality (in the arcade) and the alien turns out to be his mum, tapping him on the shoulder.
• The little boy lets out a big relieved smile and giggles, after he realizes it was just "make-believe" and walks out of the arcade holding his mums hand. 

(Notes)

This idea I like, because it's very simple and only really has two environments, "the arcade" and "the moon".

It would be really nice to animate especially the jumping across the moon. And I could use already rigged characters so I could put all my focus on the animation and environment modelling and lighting. The story is good to because its a light-hearted comedy which I think children would love. 

The Mime (Idea#2)

• Starts off with the mime entering the circus ring and maybe doing a little trick to get the crowd going.
• Then he gestures at a kid in the audience and the kid looks around to make sure he's gesturing at him, and touches his hand to his chest as if to say "you mean me?" 
• The mime looks at the boy and nods and encourages the boy to come join him up into the circus ring (stage).
• So the boy comes up into the circus ring.
• The mime then pretends to tie the boy up, and checks if the ropes are tight.
• when the mime turns around to smile at the crowd, the boy free's himself from the invisible ropes.
• The boy then throws an invisible sack over the mimes head, causing the mime to loose his footing and fall on his face on the stage.
• The audience lets a big cry of laughter out and the boy gets a big cheeky grin on his face.
• The mime drags himself up off of the floor, and lets a big scream out at the boy, realizing that he's just spoke, covers his mouth, as if he can push the words back in.
• The audience looks like their in shock, and the mime sees this and hangs his head in shame, as the curtains close around him.

(Notes)

This idea is okay, I think maybe the invisible ropes and sacks, might be hard to show the audience because they might not get what's going on. I like the ending the best out of this because it would be fun to animate the mimes expressions and body language.

The Box (Idea#3)

• There's a little boy sitting on the stairs counting up to 10 with his hands covering his eyes, because he's playing hide and seek.
• Then when he's finished counting he goes looking around the house for the hider.
• He see's a lump under the duvet and runs up and pulls back the duvet with a determined smile on his face, but when he sees no ones under the duvet, he pulls a face and carries on looking.
• He sees that the attic stairs are down, so he decides to climb up and see what's up there.
• There's not much light in the attic, so he picks up a torch that's on the floor, and flicks the switch on but it doesn't come on straight away so he bangs the back of the torch with his hand, and sure enough it comes on.
• He looks around a little, and hears a scary noise, and gets a fright, causing him to fall back onto a bookcase knocking it over behind him.
• As the boy picks himself up, he notices a small old fashioned box on the floor.
• He bends down in front of the box, dusting off the top of the box with his hand, he then opens the clasp on the front, opening the lid, and revealing a blinding white light.

(Notes)

I really like this idea, but I feel like it's lacking something at the end, it feels more like a trailer of a film and that something else is going to happen at the end. but I like the game of hide and seek included in it.

Soufflé (Idea#4)

• Starts off with a guy making some kind of cake batter in the kitchen.
• Then he is precisely pouring it into a small pot and carefully popping it in the oven.
• And eagerly waiting for it to cook.
• He's checking his watch, tapping his fingers on the bench.
• Until he eventually just sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the oven, just watching it rise slowly.
• He slightly nods off while waiting for the it to bake.
• He gets loudly awakened by the oven timer beeping along the top of the oven.
• He jumps up, looking all excited, while speedily popping on his oven gloves, he then carefully takes out the delicate soufflé and steadily puts it down on the bench, trying not to damage it.
• When it's down on the bench he looks down at his perfectly baked delight and does a little clap and his hard work.
• And the soufflé sinks back down into itself, now ruined the guy looks devastated and just hangs his head and lets out a little weep.

(Notes)

This is one of my favourite idea's because its so simple theirs only one environment to model, and the animation has no dialogue, it's just body language and facial expressions. Which I think I could show my character animation skills.