This particular background took a very long time to get right. Athough, that being said I'm still not entirely happy with it. Working upwards, you can see the different layers that are in this layout. There needs to be a foreground and a backround because the 3D train needs to be composited in between the two, to make it look as if it's really in the shot.

The foreground, after many minor tweeks was ready fairly quickly however the very back of the shot was tricky. I wanted the right angle to show the steepness of the hill, yet keep the cathedral at the very top. Also I wanted it to be off centre and skew slightly. That's the bit I'm not too excited about.

If the hill was skewed too much the buildings looked out of proportion, or it didn't look steep enough, eventually I settled with the one 2nd from the top. And after a suggestion to make a more faded look to the background from Sean, I came up with the layout that will be used in the final film.

This layout was fairly simple to do, it was literally taken from the animatic, where Charlie loses his umbrella and the wind takes it away. All that was needed was the corner of the building and part of the street, the extra characters can be added in later.

Some people may be thinking, 'Why are you including people in a background? Surely they will look odd not moving?'

Yes, but... That's the point. The group decided that we should use this background because the imp is playing with toys, and toy's can't move on their own. At first it may look strange, but then this will add to the mystery of the whole situation, trains running backwards and forwards, nobody being able to move... It will hopefully put the focus onto Charlie more. With the reaction of 'this doesn't make sense!'

So anyway, this is the background for all of Charlie's reaction shots. Where he will be animated in Flash by Aaron and myself over the top.

I don't want to bore you with all of the different versions of our animatic, so... after many many drawings... here's how the final animatic, well... the one we've been happy with for over 3 days and eventually how our film should look. Or there abouts!

Now we'd worked out better angles for the film I started thinking about the colour palette, the plan is to use greys and browns to show the oppressive atmosphere on the ground.
The mid (sky) shots are to be brighter, to show the escape from such a place and finally we decided to use bright, contrasting colours in the Imp's world to show excitement and playfulness.

So here's a 15 minute sketch to indicate the colours of the barrier and buildings

Just an example of a couple of new shots I have added to the animatic

Updated animatic...

Mostly focusing on the transition from Charlie's world to the Imp's.

i just wanted to show my ideas of camera angles and timing for the first quarter-ish... will ask the group what they think...

Here's the first page of the storyboard, I won't put them all up because you can see it in the animatic...

This is my first idea of how the Imp's room could look... not much detail on this one, but not a bad rough sketch methinks.

More to come!!

Imp poses

Aaron needed a turn-around of the little guy so he can be modelled in Maya. Here he is!

a slight colour change

Imp character

And now we have the IMP!!
These were also the colours I was picturing, red to connotate links with the devil and mischeif, mixed with purples and yellows so he doesn't end up looking flat.

So... like the business man (now called Charlie) I've started sketching some ideas of how the Imp may look. We decided that he should be cute, yet with an ellement of mischeif.

Thinking about the colour of him now... we think dull greys will help make him look worn down. The scratchy effect could increase as time goes by to add to his frustration??

very rough mid shot of the character...

After talking with the rest of my group and going through some more designs with Neil; we all agreed on this guy. We liked the almost blank expression on his face. As well as the 'chinlessness'. The centre drawing I wanted to skew slightly to make him more interesting and appealing front on. I also wanted him to have quite a sufficiant overhang on the rim of his hat, allowing for the opportunity to help exaggerate his emotions in the animation.

I recently downloaded sketchbook, and so I was very happy to start doodling. The group decided that I should do the character designs for our film.
so...

A quick shot of the first character designs for the business man...