Fables and films

Blue's model sheet

2007-11-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

Red's model sheet

2007-11-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

My first post is an ugly post...

2007-08-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

but I had to break the ice with something! Name's Tyson Murphy-- I'm all of your's fanboy. Applying to the program in April. Just a question- is it already decided that the evil master is going to be skinny and such? I thought maybe a fat master would give off a good atmosphere of gluttony. My sketch isn't quite as fat and disgusting as I was thinking.... but that's what came out.

All your stuff is amazing, sorry for the noob first post, my internship just ended so maybe I can help out if only a little.

murrrppphhh

AAAAAAAAA!!!! BIG NEWS!!!!!

2007-08-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

okay, everyone, sorry to post pictureless, but i figured this was the best way to get out the AMAZINGLY awesome word that the one and only special edition "Jungle Book" DVD set to release this fall includes a genuine original FRANK AND OLLIE COMMENTARY amongst the plethora of dazzling extras!! i mean, come on- does life GET any better???

i would venture no.

except maybe at pixar.

Some quick pen sketches

2007-08-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a handful of designs I whipped up--all quick pen sketches. The landscape I actually stole directly from a painting hanging in my brother and sister in law's house. I like the tender scene between mother and son. Also, what do you make of dad's face?

That's me in the corner...

2007-08-06T07:44:00.001-07:00

Okay. I'd like to apologize for my absence. I didn't even get to bring my laptop. Not that it would have mattered. I haven't drawn anything in like... two weeks. ANYTHING. It's disgusting. But the honeymoon's over now, and with it my wife's reign over sketchbook and laptop usage.

I'd like all of us, thems that be in Provo at the moment, to have a chance to meet this Thursday or Friday. Preferably Thursday at 5:00 pm. IF this time does not work for you, please email me and let me know what would be preferable. We can do it later, too- anytime after 5:00 works for me. Levi and I should have some boards to present by then, and anyone else who wants to (Ron, Brant, Bueller, anybody) can bring boards, designs, originals, etc. What boards I have will prolly be thumbnails.
Also: who has a spiffy idea about where to meet? We could reserve a study room at the library. Is the HFAC still out? Whatever. We need a Room of Requirement, and whoever brings it is captain of the D.A.

And some drawrings.

Dad's armor is from the Qin (pronounced 'chin,' I found out from a friend) dynasty. This armor would have been work by an officer in the army, someone of the nobility. I like it for simplicity and iconograpy- this is the armour that the ceramic army guarding the emperor's tomb wear.

I'm out.

2007-07-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

Keep drawing.

See you in August.

composition stuff

2007-07-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

here's some weird landscape ideas I had. I was wondering what you guys thought. I've been messing around with the social layers of the mountain thing, trying to make an interesting composition, and just started playing around with guash and this weird Chinese "Guash" paper that's sort of a long story (and unfortunately isn't good for guash at all and has this weird circle texture.) That and I'm sorry about my camera. I take pictures in the middle of the day without my flash so that its not overexposed, but unfortunately it came out underexposed today. I'll come across a scanner eventually for all this stuff. That and I paint better than this...on almost every other type of paper. If I work the Xue Shuan too much it starts dissolving on me, haha. It was a struuuuuggle

There's this island idea where they could build off of eachother in some fantastical way. Only prob is that it looks like a pirate island. yar. This might be drawn out, but it was designed to look something like the dragon river spirit. The fog needs help, too. I drew it on sort of half hazardly because it was a thumbnail, and I have a tendency to do weird skies on thumbnails. I don't know why.

Then I thought about pirates of the Carribean, and about how the most recent one starts off in Thailand or something, and the whole city was actually built on the water on stilts instead of on land. I thought "hey, what if the poorest levels was on water in a bay, with the richer areas literally rising above and around them?" So I've got this thumbnail to sort of visualize whats goin down. Hopefully it makes sense.

That or it could just be a simple mountain, but there's this part of me that just can't do that. I tried to do that...but then made it floating. Like this.

Then I remembered they already did something like that on Star Wars. (also, the colors on this are...so different than they are right now. I leveled it but there's only so much you can do, that and apparently whats normal on my monitor is sort of yellow on all elses.)

Another weird idea--I remember this book on pictures of China I had at home, and this one village was on a mountain so steep that it looked like it was built into the mountain, a lot like the Native Americans did down in Four Corners (but on the base instead of the top of the cliff.) I was thinking that it appeared so cramped and busy with the houses piled on eachother like that, it would be good for a marketplace or poorer situation where things are stressfull and ... busy. Just a random idea. Plus, there are those huge statues carved into Mountains down in China, and you could stick a couple in the backgrounds to look pretty.

A couple of hours = a couple of paintings

2007-07-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

Here's what I got done this afternoon. Sorry the scans of the mountain and water spirit are goofy and two-toned, but the paintings were so big I had to scan them left/right and then splice the images. Alas...
And another pic of good ole mom and dad, as dad readies himself to depart for the battle...I really need to get a hold of a book of Chinese armor. My goal here was for simplified, animatable designs. Sorry I totally copped out by cropping the feet--oops! Well, that's it for today!

Some Silhouettes

2007-07-16T13:50:00.001-07:00

Can I just say I have the worst time trying to spell the word "silhouette"...
Anyhow, here are some quick india ink silhouettes I did late Saturday night. I am working on some more finished paintings as we speak. Hopefully I'll have something post-able within a couple of hours!

Shave and a haircut...

2007-07-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

So I re-worked my master doodles according to Simini's specifications. Here they are.

... and then there's this doodle I did in the mirror while Kat was getting HER hair cut. Just 'cause I'm SURE you all want to see my drawing of myself. Right? Who wouldn't?

Starter set...

2007-07-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm still shooting stuff in with my webcam. I'd apologize some more for it, but these are just really quick sketches ANYWAY to get a li'l feedback on the way some of these characters are played. Some of them are, in fact, played. So before I go on and do pretty colored drawrings... Whatcha think?

P.S.- I got a SERIOUS haircut. Just thought I'd let you people know. I look like Peter Parker. Or Peter Pan. I'm not sure which; it fluctuates.

this is for eric

2007-07-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

So I checked and they are PC Jpegs, so that deosn't seem to be the problem, so I've posted a little flower but this time I did it through blogger (once I figure that out.)

Hm...I think blogger just shrinked it to a low quality...I guess I'll see when I post. Can you see both a flower and a butterfly? They should be two pictures uploaded different ways. kinda weird because blogger wants me to use it as a link instead of a IMG SRC which...anyways, we'll see.

Willing to help

2007-07-12T17:17:00.001-07:00

I'm not much of a concept artist, but I do love animating. As soon as you get to that stage, let me know. I can use flash to pencil test (actually very quick and easy with a wacom tablet) or I can go traditional as well. Just let me know what you'd like to see, or how else I could help. I'm way excited.

Are you going to link to everyone else's blogs? Just curious. Mine's KeyserHouse if you were wondering.

-Jason

mommies and draperies

2007-07-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

My computer was pretty nice today, only crashed once while putting together this entry. Someone mentioned they couldn't see my pictures last time--is the problem because I use Photobucket to store my pictures? If so, how can I change that, because I'm pretty new to blogger...as in this is my second post using blogger.

Anyways, the good thing about missing a lot of time on this blog because the internet in my house is lame is that now I know I have a lot of stuff I don't even have to show you pertaining to the master anymore. Since y'all are narrowing down on a face (and my master face looks a lot of the same with bigger ears is all), I started looking around at costuming, and I simplified a getup I found on an old Japanese painting. (sorry if some of these are huge. I think it's photoshop thats crashing my computer, and I went back and made some smaller before it crashed, and I just don't want to go back again to finish the job.)

I was looking for a way to add the tiger into his clothes, so I liked the stripes down the middle and the stripes at his long sleeves. The over-tunic (or whatever you call it) reminded me of some white trash vest from the 80's, complete with rockin shoulders. He has a white trash attitude so I jumped on it. Also, for some reason I think all cats should dress like the 80's with big shoulders, maybe its because of too much thundercats and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yet, what it deos is give the Master a belly thats a different color than the rest of him, much like a cat deos. That and the tail down the front makes...a tail.

It deosn't include showing the feet, which I thought would be an upside for the animation simplicity...but then again it has a lot of lines. Should I look at stuff more simple than this? I only took 160 a year ago, and even when I was animating myself I put too many lines on my characters. Which sucked. Anyways, I gestured it a few times so you can tell me what you think for when I go back to my costuming research.

PS the right torso on there is way too high. Like a woman. In fact the entire pose is like a woman. oops.

I also have some emo mommies!

Playing around with her sadness, I put hair over one eye and felt like she shouldn't ever really look up. I played around with the skinniness and whether or not she should have bags under her eyes.
I was trying out this thing they do in asian paintings where women's dresses do these folds at the bottom and bunch up, but I don't think it worked out too hot here. I eventually stopped doing it so if you see it again I'm sorry.

PPS explain to me blogger: how can I go back and edit an old entry if I have a nasty mispelling or something?

Another idea

2007-07-11T18:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, I agree with Jake about this all kind of getting out of control...not that designs are getting out of control, they are all lovely, they really are, and I think we should do exactly what he said in keeping all of the styles the same and in designing casts, but I have an addition to that post, which is just an idea until I have some feedback.

I think we should vote. Each and every single post or character design should be voted on. Rule. You can't vote on your own. We use a ten scale. One being the lowest and ten being the highest. A three is a three on the ten scale and a one is a one, we can escape using hurtful words this way and we can kill ideas by giving zeros to them. (as a note I don't think anyone has said anything hurtful, but this is a little less confusing than writing paragraphs about things and then having people wonder if you really think we should use it in the film or if you are being polite).

If something gets a consistantly low score (below 5) and is given this score more than three times, chances are we don't even want to elaborate on the idea. I think tens should be saved for finished designs and that nines should mean we by all means would like to further develope the characters.

This means everyone should comment on each post with a single number. This way we know what to develop further and what to drop all together. For example;

Turtlecity: 0
Original Boy design: 9
Simini's wounded tiger: 9
Jake's most recent mother posts: 9

This means, obviously, turtle city is dead and the rest I strongly think we should develop into finished designs...

Tell me what you guys think

No longer yelling...

2007-07-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Some more mother drawings...

I did these after seeing Jake's silhouette of the mother. I wanted to make her very fragile looking, and much heavier at the bottom, sort dripping, like she's wasting away from sadness. Kind of a lille extreme... but I liked the mood. looking at the screen now though she looks kind of evil... hmmm...

Yes, so, ignore the one were it looks like she's vomiting... I was trying to draw her with her ands over her mouth in shock, but, umm, failed. I like the one in the middle probably the best.

Point of conflict!!!

2007-07-11T17:58:00.001-07:00

Here's a watercolor I did of the master strangling the boy. I thought it would be dramatic. I guess this is something of a precursor to the upcoming "cast design" posting. At least I have 2 of the characters in here. So far, I favor Simini's design of the "wounded tiger" master (I'm using too many quote markers...) and Jake's original design of the boy remains popular. I don't know how simplified this should be. Obviously the concept art will most likely remain more detailed than the finalized animatable designs we decide on. I hope to simplify and modify these designs & post something later with everyone in an animatable fashion. Could someone post a list of exactly who everyone in the cast is? I can think of the boy, the master, mom, dad, the water spirit... who else? Let me know what you think of this design so I can have direction as to how I should tweak this for later posts.

A desperate attempt to get Simini to stop yelling at me with her keyboard...

2007-07-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

In demonstration of how we're still posting stuff that we come up with as we do so while still working towards a feel for the film... here are some drawrings. And it's okay.

Master, Mother, and Water Spirit Quickies

2007-07-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some rough (and I mean rough) sketches for a few characters. My sketches are intended as exploratory as opposed to trying to peg the final, animatable design. At the least, you could say they're exploring extremes so that we know for sure where we don't want to go.
This is a sketch of the boy's mom in their situation after the dad dies at war. I had the idea of the mother having to work in the fields in horrible conditions.

Here's a couple of sketches for the master. I wanted to explore different extremes with this character, as far as age and size go.

And finally, yes, I'm not giving up on the sea turtle water spirit, because I think it's AWESOME, whether it's Chinese, Japanese, or Indian or whatnot. I mean, just imagine a ginormous turtle surfacing next to the bridge! Pretty much I'll be pushing this idea until it becomes a capital offense.

DIRECTION!!!

2007-07-11T13:12:00.000-07:00

Ladies, Gentlemen, and the rest of you.

It has been brought to my attention that we are doing a bit of drifting in our design and story development. So... we have prepared for you a new and exciting task, a central direction that we will be following until we arrive at the desired destination.

Design the cast.

Ron's pre-giant-freaking-turtle post consists of stylized versions of each character in the film, together, more or less complete, tied together by commen elements in design.

Let us all do that. Each of us will put up, in one post, every character in the film, done in the same style and at the same level of completion. That is the format. That is the challenge. That is our direction.

I hope that, by doing this, we will arrive upon a style in which to continue our adventures in story and design, a style that we can all emulate, and a style that rocks.

With respect to backgrounds, I spent quite the pretty penny on books in chinatown- books on architechture, culture, clothing, etc. I would like these books to be used in development, so I'd like to hold off a bit on serious set development. Let's nail down our characters. Give 'em some personality. Give 'em some style.

Go to, and rock hard.

2007-07-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

O.K. heres those boards I was working on. If there are still some turtle lovers out there you will like these. I did the turtle boards sometime last week before the turtle haters made their comments. Anyway, I dont think they would be hard to do and I think they would add an extra amount of interest to them, but I'll drop it if no one else likes it.

The film starts out in complete white and fades into this scene showing the turtes walking around with cities on their backs. the camera zooms in on the middle one as it slowly pans down.

The camera goes into another cloud and fades to white.

When the camera comes out we are closer up on the bottum tier where the camera begins to pan up the city.

The camera stops when it gets up to where the boy lives and the story begins.

One of the battle flashes.

Show the boy leaving the turtle to go to another trtle or the main land across a bridge. A bird of prey flies overhead.

The boy takes one more sad look behind him to see his mom. He knows its going to be a while before he sees her again.

There are two men with axes waiting at the other end who move aside and then cuts the ropes when he is all the way across.

The boy knocking on the door of the grumpy man.

his reflection

dads reflection

uh oh!

shadow of the serpent spirit.

pan up on the serpent.

I kind of like the turtle idea because turtles kind of represent a home anyway. Plus I think it is better if our hero actually has to remove himself from his original environment as part of his journey. I think it makes him more alone which could add to the unfair life he has been dealt. I think it is better if he has to live with the man and dosent go home to his mom every night.

I did these 3 days ago

2007-07-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

I did these a few days ago as well as a bunch of boards. The boards have a turtle in them dang it. So in the name of awsome you have to keep an open mind one last time and then I'l let it drop. I don't have time to post the boards now. Hopefully later today.

I'm a big fan of Jakes original design for the boy, so I tried to take what I liked in the other characters and get them all to match together. So if your looking at these designs and saying "dude I already drew that", you know why.

2007-07-10T00:09:00.001-07:00

so i cleaned up the other version of the mother that seemed to have the most appeal - i made her hair less dorky too: NEAT.

Your mom.

2007-07-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

Um... I need to post semi-frequently or you people will think that I've abandoned ship. I plan to post some actual watercolored drawrings tomorrow. The silhouette of Mom is more of a study in mood/posture than anything else, and the face was the most interesting profile I came up with. All the time I had to draw today was spent with Kat and her Mom and was done with a #2 on copy paper. Forgive me, people. I'll post some awesome tomorrow.

The stuff I didn't post last week

2007-07-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

ah I have not posted yet so I should get started on that. I was over at my Great-Great StepStep Grandpas family reunion last week, where I discovered I have second cousins are Irani. Heck yes. Back to the subject, hopefully I can get this post up without my tablet crashing my computer. Ever since I've come back from Cali its been super pissy. I don't think it liked being alone.

Ah! My computer just crashed and deleted everything I had down on this post!

Well...So I knew there was an assignment of backgrounds and the master. Didn't know about the mom because of the issues I have with going on my computer now. So are we done completely with the master? because I have stuff, but I don't want to mess with the system if you already have a character down. Tell me if I should just post it anyways.

Now I guess the water spirit design is still up in the air. This is the dragon I was thinking about. Ignore the part with the ax where the water is not pretty. I forgot to photoshop that out.

I was messing around with landscaping and so here's a landscape thumb with teirs involved...but it has about four mountains instead of one, so I'm thinking I'll have to revamp it maybe. What if the different levels of society were on different mountains?

As for the story, its definately way more polished than it was a week or so ago. I like it a lot more every time it changes. Is it getting storyboarded right now? I feel like the beginning of the story had so many scene change descriptions, as if you guys already had it down.

I've tried to catch up, but I may have missed stuff. Hopefully I'm not repeating anything with my comments. One thing that isn't a huge deal but confused me a little is the part with the money bag where the money flies out of it and dissapears. I'm thinking, because there's so many other 'magical' things going on in this story with the crazy mountains and the water spirit, that the bag could be misinterpreted as a magical bag instead of a time lapse shot. It makes it seem like they got screwed over with leprachaun money or something. Maybe instead if the scene ended with the bag and it fades to a later scene where the mother exchanges the last penny for an octopus or something and the boy is inspired take some initiative and find a job transitioning to him in the market place.
And thats all I got.

We interrupt this blog for an anouncement...

2007-07-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you are still in Provo, but if you are "Llama Fest 2007" is happening this Saturday at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork. There will be culturally rich religous festivities and most importantly... Llamas. I realize it has nothing to do with the film and is the wrong culture, but it sounds like a golden sketchbook opportunity if anyone wanted to go...

(sorry Jake... back to the film now...)

mother

2007-07-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

here are a few images i whipped up - i personally like the one on the bottom left, but i would go through and fix up her hair doohickers so they don't look so much like antennas... i also took the liberty to draw levi's next girlfriend.

Mother

2007-07-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

Here are some designs for the mother (that was the "assignment", right?)... I started trying to make her look like some of the women in the Chinese paintings I've been looking at... but she looked really young so I pulled up Jake's sketch from San Francisco and used that fro inspiration... (and, wow, trying to remove the blue pencil from Moleskine scans is annoying... so I was playing around with tones to make it look better- not entirely successfully...)

My favorites are probably the one in the third image with her hair up, and the one in the top right corner of the second. I'm not really sure what to do about the hair... I kind of got stuck on the "Mulan" style... I tried it down several times as well... but again it made her look really young, and I imagine that a married, upper-class woman would probably wear her hair up... but if anyone else has any ideas...

2007-07-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

okay.... so i didnt do more to the lines in the water because it is going to be changed, but here is an example of the lines that i would like for this design. its up for any suggestions.

2007-07-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

well, this is my design for the water spirit. I enjoyed designing her sooo much. I'm still wroking on her and need to modify the water some. The line quality is definetely not something that i want, but dont worry it will get fixed. I had a HORRIBLE problem! went to mexico without pit pens!!!!!! i know i know! i almost died! but dont worried, right now im in california and am going to get some!! yeyy!!!! anyway, the water needs alot of work. I got this cool japanese water examples and i am going to spend some time working with it. Im having a blast! Ilike the tones but i think that the water could worked more.

2007-07-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

By the way, the city and mountain would be way bigger, with way more houses huts and shacks and the top rung would be way more elaborate (hopefuly with some sweet chinese garden)

These are mine! drawn before I found the Yamaguchi book. I want to take a poll on the river spirit. How many people want to never see this kind of river spirit again? I liked him originally but without any positive feedback 2 posts in a row I would like to just move on to trying a bunch of different dragon designs.

How many people for and against having the city (not the insanely fast one I drew here, but the one from the story, more like Jake described, on the back of a giant turtle like this concept here. Tell me now and I will kill it, we do have a lot on our plate already, but I don't want to get away from the whole mystical feel...like that just about anything can happen in this universe we are trying to portray. Also, through out the film we could do some really cool things happening in the background, like other turtles passing (very blurred in the distance) which I can take care of with minimal work using a mixture of maya flash and after effects (Basically, we can do this, but I need feedback to make sure it even feels appealing to anyone other than me...and I'm a little bit distorted on the idea right now, so tell me if it even goes along with the feel or the style of the film

2007-07-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

(allof these are painted by yamaguchi akira)

2007-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

These are some of the most amazing examples of what we might want that I have ever seen, I got this book with my books and supplies money, because it's amazing. it has stuff in it that would be gorgeous brought to life, or limited life for the storybook thing.

Background experiment

2007-07-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

It;s not really what I was going for... but it's what came out so I figured i'd put it up anyway... playing with using washes and india ink.

I was thinking maybe the begining could start withthe bamboo really close up on all fromes and then zoom through middle ground until you see the mountains in the background, and then you could zoom in close to the mountain. But the foreground could stay in the side panels... though these are rather pathetically painted. But for an idea anyway.

2007-07-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

I should probably only post stuff of a higher quality, but I wanted to get some ideas out there. These lanterns are from Chinatown, and I would like to see some of the design elements therein represented (the red, the tiled roof look, the inset patterns, etc) in the backgrounds we put out. there is also this SUPER quick sketch of how the mountain could be composed. I'm gonna be traveling all day tommorrow, so I won't be able to throw down much at all on the blog, or respond to much in general. Just a heads up.

For Stacy...

2007-07-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

These are some designs Stacy emailed me. She also suggested that the scene where the boy brings the master dinner and gets BEAT ON is redundant, does nothing to move the plot OR establish character, and should be removed. I agree, but what do y'all think?

Some concept ideas.

2007-07-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

I was reprimanded for having not posted anything yet so here ya go. A couple different ideas for river spirits and some background stuff.

That crazy looking Mexican is the guy that beats on little children. It’s not a very good drawing but there are a few things I liked about it that people could play with if they wanted. I made his eyes big round and crazy like those Chinese dragon kites. I also like that his nose is upturned and he is missing a tooth. These uglifying features seemed to match the attitude of the protagonist.

anthropology, even

2007-07-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Not an art post, just something intersting I learned today... In anthropology this morning the teacher was talking about different ways to show love in different cultures, and she mentioned that in China the way children show love for their parents is by supporting them financially once they are able to earn money. And I got very excited because that's our film! Yay for the revisions!

And i know we aren't being that hyper-academic about it... but it's cool to have extra layers... especially if this ever gets shown outside our own culture.

We're on the right track, and that's exciting.

Tiered Background

2007-07-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the background challenge and pulling reference from good old google search and I thought you all might want to see it as well.... the idea for the tiered, fantasy landscape came from some amazing ivory carvings we saw in Chinatown. So I pulled some pictures of those... sorry they aren't terribly detailed or high quality, but just to get an idea...

i stole it!

2007-07-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

ha - i made this all by myself. i just wanted to see what he looked like with crazyyyyy eye brows: i can see jake's face now :)

Samurai turtles?

2007-07-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Um, after I saw Levi's turtle, I felt that I had to post this. It's already up on my blog, and it's got a wierd Grateful Dead vibe, but it's an idea. Simini hates the turtle thing, by the way. Which makes it even MORE awesome.

more locations (experimental)

2007-07-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

River spirits and experimental boards

2007-07-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some ideas for river spirit and location

2007-07-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Mac is back, we're in business.

2007-07-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

Having retrieved my luggage, here is some crap I should've posted AGES ago.

This is what I did on an airplane while Simini was doing her master drawings. Same idear, diff'rent take. pardon the webcam.

These are some faces and a chick that I sketched in San Fran. They're s'posed to be studis for master, mom, and dad respectively.

Story.

2007-07-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, everyone should be getting a script in the email. If not, the Story column has been updated. Please voice whatever input you have as a comment on this post. Thanks to everyone who has been contributing their ideas and designs, and thank you all for being patient with me as I lose my luggage and mind all over the country. The new story is longer and more involved, but the characters are SO MUCH better and more dynamic.

New Background Challenge: many-tiered mountain from the new story (the whole mountain or just one tier- it doesn't matter)

New Character Challenge: Mother

Master... i need something new ot title this...

2007-07-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

A bit cleaner and hopefully more menacing... I'm having trouble with the pose. I dropped in some basic color with painter.

Flying...

2007-07-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

Okay. My computer is in my bag at an airport in Jackson. I'm in Hattiesburg. I flew in to New Orleans. It's two in the morning. As soon as I get ahold of my scanner/computer/digitalcamera or ANYTHING, I'll post my #)(*@_*)(#$ master drawings that I've been working up. As soon as I get some sleep, I'm gonna call the folks I need to call and send everyone a copy of the revised treatment.

The treatment is gonna be kind of like a script. With no dialogue. You all get to read it (I'll email it), and we'll have a copy up on the blog for everyone. EVERYONE is invited to comment, make suggestions, etc. All suggestions will be considered and addressed. NOT all suggestions will be taken or used. Do not get bent out of shape about this. We'll probably go through this process a few times with revisions. When I feel like the treatment is done, I will post the final, and that's what we'll work from and what will eventually be our real, actual film. From the treatment we will board and design. This is a REALLY UNIQUE opportunity to influence the film, and I hope you all GRAB it.

I'm really sorry about doing all this from the road and losing my stuff all over the place. I suck at travel.

-Jake

More Master

2007-07-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Here are some terribly rough master designs... We were talking on the San Francisco trip and Jake described the master as a wounded tiger (which will make a lot more sense when the story changes are posted). Anyways, I tired to make his facial structure tiger-like. Here's the reference I used

And here are the sketches:

I now thes are way too detaile dbut it help to have at least something to simplify from... I want to do a cleaner design tomorrow, so comments welcome!

master faces

2007-07-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

i just felt like playing with some designs for the faces - the bottom right is a mix out of the two i liked most

master

2007-07-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

i personally like the idea of a skinny master, but a fatty McFatfat seems more appropriate to me for some reason - i am keen towards the beard with crazy eyebrows: i prefer the hat, the version on the bottom left screams iron monkey to me; one thing that i would like to change on these drawings is to make the face not so smooth, but more rugged with sharp cheek bones

Old guys

2007-07-03T15:50:00.002-07:00

Alright, I just realized that I cannot color on my computer with beans. Guess I'll have to do more photoshop tutorials to get up to par. Nevertheless, here they are:

-OR-

For the old master I made a fat version and a skinny version, as to keep with what Anthony suggested. As opposed to making them overly evil or creepy-looking, I simply wanted to make them look mean and grumpy, like those mean old guys that bossed us around when we were kids. I don't know if that's the direction we're going for, but I feel it's worth considering. Keep it simple is what I always say.

So whatchya think? Any comments? And yes, I know I drew them wearing Japanese Kimonos...

2007-07-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

These are ideas for environments for when we start boarding. Of course they are not good. But for the background shoots of bamboo, I like the sillouette with segements in fine ink thing I've got going on in the second drawing. The house is horrible, but it was more for the road leading to the bamboo thicket.

How about this; after the story part with the master plays out we have him leave the scene (heading left) away from the house. Go to rough sketch 2. He's walking, bamboo stalks passing him slowly. He's happy everything going good, then all of the sudden he leaves the shot heading straight down (cut through triptic to rough sketch 3) he slides for a while on his feet down the hill, trips on a rock, and tumbles/ rolls all the way down the hill (cut to drawing of the bridge I haven't posted) he flies out of the thicket and collides with a shrine that is sitting near the bridge. The shrine is a stone representation of the river spirit. He prays apologetically to her picks up his axe and heads across the bridge and out of the scene. As he passes the shrine (back facing the river spirit) the stone representation smiles and bows slightly.

This would help ease the river spirit into the film and cause some excitement instead of just having her explode into the scene later.

River spirit

2007-07-02T10:33:00.001-07:00

Obviously, there are some major issues with the way she is dressed (I want her bottom half to be shrouded in a whirl of water, similar but not set to a mermaid's tail, tapering down into the water. Also, no cleavage and hopefully some sort of baggy Chinese kimono...of course I want her to have a beatiful figure, I don't want her to be dressed like a slut though...anyways, I will draw it instead of writing about it I guess, tell me what you think as soon as you can and PLEASE someone else, if you've got any improvments draw em (please).

Master

2007-07-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Sly, hidden malicousness. The master should be one of those sociopaths Disney was so good at portraying in Alice in Wonderland. In the movie some of the characters were good at being nice and funny one minute (or pretty in the flowers' cases) and the next minute they would turn vicious and cruel.

Or not. It's just an idea.

simple boy's house

2007-07-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

i like the idea of the house being next to some sort of water source - i played around with the house being on the edge of a cliff with some steps that led down a river, but i really liked the flow of the river coming right out of the two mountains... one smooth motion. i kinda played around as well with the mountain turning into bamboo on the other side to keep that same smoothness factor: i'm personally less and less a fan of the little houses in the back the more i look at it, but i wanted some way to convey that they were part of a city, albeit somewhat secluded

2007-06-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

My phone is dead, everyone. I lost my )@#*&$^ charger in Reno. I'll call as soon as I have my phone. Also, I'm having trouble posting images from the road. I've got some master designs worked up (we all do), but I don't have any way to get 'em up 'till Monday night. Does everyone have this week's designs worked up? Let's see 'em, boys and girls! The deadline approacheth. I really hope that everyone's designs rock with the force and fury of thunder, for if they do, so shall the film.

Ryan approved the new changes today, and everyone should be getting a script in the ol' email within a few days. The story is incomparably better and more compelling as well as, consequently, easier to tell! Be excited. Be awesome.

Expect drastic changes in story and design...

2007-06-29T23:49:00.001-07:00

Okay.

Here's the deal. The visit to Pixar and the influence of the illustration kids has wrought some serious changes in where I and the majority of the crew want to take the film. I have yet to discuss these proposed changes with Levi or Eric, but they are REALLY, REALLY good changes, and you should all expect story and scheduling changes in the future.

Be excited. This is about to get really, REALLY good. Also, see Ratatouille as soon as you can.

-Jake

style guide

2007-06-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

here are the style guides from everything from mountains to water - be practicing these in your space time :)

Bamboo test

2007-06-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is NOT how the film will look, the colors aren't right and its just not the feel we want, but it is an example of bamboo movement.

2007-06-28T11:47:00.001-07:00

The timing on this is horrible and there is a big mistake at the beggining, but this is an animatic of my scene. The finalized version will completly be redone, and the characters will be boarded on model (remember I had only a week and a half to finish this) Alot of this is terrible but it is my first completed animatic, even though it isn't in its final version.

2007-06-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

Just an idea...could we possibly make yang more detailed for the boards? Please please please? At least for the close ups? Its so much easier to convey emotion in a stationary drawing when you can draw detailed. When animation starts, and he's moving around, emotion can be conveyed by a number of different things, including movement, music, and facial expressions...but I do admit, it probably is a bad idea, seeing as how I take too much time on everything anyways.....

For this week

2007-06-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

For this week we need designs of the Master, the boy's house, and the landscape around it. Our initial idea was for the house to be surrounded by mountains and a bamboo thicket. We would like to keep it that way, but if you have a better idea Prove it! Seriously, if you have a wild idea for improvement go ahead and get crazy, but please only post it if you feel that it is an improvement.
Also, Jake and I will be starting the boarding process very soon. So keep those environments coming. We need master's house, bridge, tree stump area where the boy chops wood, and then every area in between which is supposed to be bamboo thickets. The boy leaves the house heading left and returns heading right so the map should go in this order

5 4 3 2 1
Treestump<=====bamboo=======Bridge<======bamboo=======MastersHouse
Treestump=====>bamboo======>Bridge

Primarily though, for this week, we Need the Master's house and the environment around it. Look at Jake's drawings to see what he has in mind. And by the way, the designs look nice! I'm excited to see what you all will come up with next.

Not evil enough...

2007-06-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well, here are some ideas of where we could go with the boy's evil master. I don't know how evil he is supposed to look. Sorry these are blurry--I'm using the small scanners in the library and my sketchbook is too big. Frankly, I think the evil master looks down-right friendly in some of these (oops). The two basic ideas I had were skinny and fat. Skinny makes the master look menacing and miserly (a la Cruella Devillle), while fat makes him look like he's rich and gluttonous. I guess it depends on which side of the character we want to play up. Personally, I like the idea of a fat evil master with small hands (that indicate his lack of real power, because of his moral flaws). Also how big should he be in comparison to the boy? Does he have lackeys? Let me know what you think and I'll hammer out some more ideas. Also let me know what you think about color scheme. I'm thinking luscious reds and purples=rich, but yellow-green does make for a good evil color too...

The Challenge O' The Week!!!!

2007-06-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hooookay.

This week's assignment:

--BACKGROUND--

--The boy's home and surrounding terrain.

--CHARACTER--

--The wicked evil master dude.

These are some of Simini's paintings from our sketchbook trip. They're not 'backgrounds for the film' per se, but more like nature studies done in her own style. Style after form. So NONE of these are supposed to be finished designs, just some research we've been doing...

This is Will's

These are my own sad attempts...

background fun

2007-06-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

i am going to post the 'style guide' coming up real soon here... worry about both compostition and style but if you prefer, post your basic comps then go in and mimic the style in the pieces that you like most once you have it down better (that's what i plan on doing at least)

Oh, the meeting.

2007-06-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

Bald boy LIVES!!!

This is incomplete, but I felt the need to post SOMETHING. I mean, LEVI, that showboat, has his friggin' animatic up.

So we had our first and only meeting of the Summer today. For those of you who missed it, THIS is the pertinent information that you need. I'm looking at YOU, Anthony and Ron. "I'm getting six wisdom teeth removed!" "I have to work to support my family!" WHATEVER. I've had enough of your sniveling excuses. Anyway, the information.

THIS SUMMER: We need concept art. Everyone who has publishing permission on the blog, PLEASE POST WEEKLY. The film will only rock as hard as the designs we pump out this summer... so let's own it. Let's work it.

IN PREPERATION FOR THE FALL: If you want to animate, then start drawing off of Yang's model sheet (first post). If you want to do background work, then check out books on sumi-e and get crackin'. Watercolor is the word. We'll be posting more about that.

Email me with questions.

a couple two tree backgrounds

2007-06-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

here are some quick backgrounds that i whipped up - we are looking for simple things because we are gonna go through and make them watercolor soft soft soft soft looking... you may be able to tell from my clever labeling that the boy walks from the right panel to the left: as he comes over the first hill his head will disappear completely, then him as a big fat head will appear as he walks into the bamboo - and as he comes out of the bamboo into the 3rd panel he'll still be a big fat head (the path is heading the wrong direction [it needs to head from the bamboo towards the bridge]) then he'll once again disappear altogether and appear small as he comes into view on the cliff as he nears the bridge - in the last panel that bottom spike thinger is a river. yeah. neat. reading this entire post has probably been less fulfilling than you hoped. eh, too bad. shout out once again to myself for my clever labeling.

Background test...

2007-06-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

This is a test that Levi worked up of how we'd like the backgrounds to work and move. The art is rushed, but the IDEA is the important thing.

2007-06-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

As technical director of the film, I need paintings. I can compose some screen tests and composite some really flashy effects, but first I need some wonderfully done sumi-e landscapes, prefferably with rivers, streams or visible running water that I can animate. We're trying to achieve a living painting look...but right now we have to focus on story...which means it is going to be months before we can really start. It would be wonderful to have some landscapes before then! Post away, or give the paintings to Jake and he will take care of them.

Mom and Dad and a red table

2007-06-14T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here be the preliminary(?) designs for the mother and father... they're really generic. EVERYONE is invited to submit new designs- just make sure they're historically accurate.

2007-06-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

These are some test boards to see how the triptych (I have no idea how to spell that) format might work with storytelling and exposition.

House of something other than Flying Daggers... or wax.

2007-06-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

Background tests. A mock-up, if you will.

Model sheet

2007-06-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

This is the boy's model sheet... we hope to un-disneyfy it a bit before production, but this is the model that will be used for the storyboards. You are all invited to email me other designs if you think you've got a better idea, and Levi and I will take a look at 'em.