Tag: a moment in the sun

I’ve developed a passing rage-inducing allergy to Andrew Price after catching up on Architecture Academy modules, so it’s back to storyboarding for a bit. Yay!

Pointy wants you to know he’s watching you. Always.

So, this week.. yeah.. this week.. uh..

Between starting The Architecture Academy, making birthday presents for friends, doing my usual quota of classic movies and generally being too tired to make stuff after the day job.. nothing further to report on A Moment In The Sun at all.

I’m slightly stuck on boarding one shot but I’m sure if I took half an hour or so I’d get unstuck. No worries. Soon as I’m done catching up on Architecture Academy modules, I’m right there. Maybe even sooner.

Yeah.

Storyboarding again. Gronky is very happy to see you.

I’ve had a not-really-creative week when it comes to “A Moment In The Sun” which is weirdly apt considering it’s been a fairly rainy and not sunny week:

12 May: After rewriting the script the previous day, many beats were boarded. I was still on a roll from the weekend, apparently.

13 May: Still boarding somewhat, I had to pull out the old oil-based clay and sculpt up Gronky’s mouth before I could draw it.

14 May: Ran out of interest in boarding. Still looking for Gronky’s new design. For now, the boards will contain the old design just to keep momentum up. (Just like Wreck-It Ralph. I think.)

15 May: Nope.

16 May: Nope again, though I did catch the seminal “city movie” Man With A Movie Camera. (Think of it as a 1920s Soviet Koyaanisqatsi.)

17 May: Late Saturday night while trying to summon inspiration, I discovered that Gronky needs an underbite..He looks tops with an underbite.

18 May: Back to boarding again (taking a quick break from it while typing this). I’m past the halfway point in terms of boarding, but the second half has way more images to draw. Definitely having to fight the urge to procrastinate by doing things like blogging, that’s for sure.

I start a couple of weeks of holidays in a week. I’m intending to have modelling and rigging done on both of these guys by the time those are over – getting the boards done is important for that because then I’ll have requirements about how they have to move and deform. Gronky’s deformations in particular are looking to be pretty extreme.

Normally the cold and wet of winter sucks most of my creative energy away, and that could drop A Moment In The Sun’s momentum down to zero. We’ll see how it goes this year. Last year over winter during an enforced creative break I read a ton of books, watched a ton of cartoons and generally swotted up. This year there’s less reading planned and more Architecture Academy, possibly a marathon of Rocko’s Modern Life and/or Animaniacs.

As long as it’s still fun to draw Gronky and his big silly grin though, I can keep boarding for a while. It’s challenging but definitely fun to sell the illusion of a big dopey creature with actual brain processes.

I think I went too far into “idiot glee” on these Gronky poses. I don’t know what Gronky is thinking here. It’s meant to be excitement that Pointy is there but it’s wrong. The reaction is not properly connected to anything. It’s just pulling stupid faces.

Pointy sure is determined to be angry though, isn’t he?

This is beat 11 from the original boards. This is all changing.

Here’s what I did on “A Moment In The Sun” this week:

5 May: Energy and motivation sapped by day job. Nevertheless, a good opportunity to let the story reel sit so I can come back to it fresh. Recorded a bassline I might use later. That’s about it.

6 May: Working on Gronky’s character design, seeing what he looks like with horns, floppy ears, longer neck, etc.

7 May: Same as 5 May. Gotta pay the bills, I suppose.

8 May: I’d showed the story reel to someone earlier in the week; they said they found it hard to get a read on what Gronky was like. I changed one beat – what happened when Gronky notices Pointy – and suddenly the character dynamic lit up. Instead of the counterintuitive moment being “Gronky turns around nonchalantly after being screamed at”, it’s now “Gronky is delighted to have a new playfriend”.

9 May: Ever have one of those weeks?

10 May: Worked on the soundtrack a bit more, came up with something agreeably bleepy and groovy.

11 May: I’ve rewritten the story beats to turn Gronky into a playful, happy big guy with a butterfly fixation and also developed the quirky soundtrack a bit more. I’d get drawing so I can cut together a story reel to mull over during the week, but it’s Mothers Day so I should probably go and say hello to people.

Gronky’s character design is a long way from done – it’s OK to have something basic for the boards, but now that I have a better sense of him as a big happy derp, certain design choices should make more sense than others. I’ve also got a ton of character design education that I can pour into my brain over the week.

Hopefully in two weeks’ time when I begin a two week break from the day job, I’ll be able to start building these two jokers in Blender. Hopefully.