Animatic thumbnailing

As part of my preproduction work I had to start thumbnailing how my character will be acting and moving throughout the scene. Most of it's done really roughly just so I get the idea of how each key frame will look and also because I didn't want to spend ages carefully drawing out each part when I'm just going to have to draw it all over again anyway.

I thought I'd show you my rough thumbnail ideas for both the cat and the old lady character before my final, combined thumbnails. My friend was telling me the other day that he didn't realise how much development and pre-preproduction work goes into just the designing. This way you can see how my ideas change, even slightly, to get to the final product, which I'll probably even adjust again when it comes to storyboarding and such.

I wanted to post my final animatic which includes the sound but the clip doesn't seem to want to work, which is a massive inconvenience as I submitted it with the rest of my preproduction work yesterday. I'll try and get it sorted and post it if I can, it's not like it's the best thing ever and you need to see it but I guess it's something to watch if you've got a spare 12 seconds.

Little bit extra

I thought I'd add my final designs for my character and her cat to this here blog so you can have a proper butchers and see the finished, coloured work. These are my character turnarounds and again I wouldn't mind a bit of feedback to see what you think of the colours and designs.

I realise the images aren't that clear but you get the idea and I hope you like 'em.

Last minute

So, I’m meant to keep this blog updated with my work as I go along but I haven't really done that so I'm thinking if I just post my work in a significant order you'll get the jist of what I'm doing. I'm currently doing the preproduction work for my minor project. We were given a sound clip and had to create a character based around the voice and what it says. I just so happened to get the most depressing clip of the lot and my initial ideas consisted of an old lady talking to her dead husband...

After some development of the character and talking with my tutors about how I should go about portraying the story/clip I decided to have a little old lady talking, not to her dead husband but to her uncaring cat. My basic back story for her is that she's all alone apart from her cat, who she's absolutely in love/obsessed with but the cat (Harry) takes no interest in her whatsoever.

I'm much happier with this design and the story I've got to go with it. I've got some ideas for how the animation will look and will try to post an animatic of my final idea soon. That way you can hear the clip and see what you think of it too. Hopefully my ideas will work well with the voice, it may end up being rushed but then everything I do is last minute.

Feel free to comment/criticise the work I'm showing, it's nice to get genuine feedback.

Got to start sometime.

I suppose the best way to start would be by introducing myself. I'm Charlotte and I'm currently in my second year studying BA Animation at the ATRiuM in Cardiff. This blog is a way of getting my work to a wider audience and what I'm hoping is that it will show me how my work and styles are developing which will help me creatively.

I can't count the amount of times I've been told that starting up a blog has helped people get noticed in the animation business or even that people wanted me to start one so they can take a cheeky look at the work I'm doing.

Until now I've never really been bothered with getting my work out onto the internet but I've been told to start one up as part of my course so here it is. Due to my lack of blogging experience and an annoying shyness when it comes to people commenting/criticising my work the following blog may not be the best read but I hope you'll enjoy it on some level.