Backgrounds and Phatsounds

Just thought I'd whip up some backgrounds I pulled together this evening, a couple of external shots (obviously)... I'll have the woodland "interior" done tomorrow. They're actually 2048x1152 resolution aswell so what you'll see on screen is 50% of the image there, but then there's allowance for tracks and pans and all that jazz. On another note the music score is coming along nicely, some nice tribal beats being laid down, so stay tuned for more info on that!

Animatic v1.0

So, I've been knocking together an animatic from my storyboards. This is version 1.0, which naturally means it's unpolished, and in need of beefing out. It also means it's jam packed with place-holders. The characters are only representations of where my characters will stand, and do not necessarily reflect what my characters will look like (particularly the girl). The sound is pieced together from my mp3 collection, to try and set a general mood, but again does not necessarily reflect the finished idea:




As it stands, the 'action sequence' is a bit slow paced, I need to get some more shots in there to spruce it up a bit, but in general there are a distinct set of moods that the piece follows, those being:

Steady - Tension - Drama - Tension - Happy (I hope the animatic shows that a bit better than I can put it in words!)

Character Inspiration - Girl

I've always had an idea of what direction I wanted my male protagonist to go in, design wise - but the girl has been a bit of a grey area. I started collecting together some images that I found inspiring and threw together this quick board: (I numbered groups of pictures to discuss below..)

1. These are looking at the costume, I love the wrap around garment that these 2 girls are wearing, and think I could really take something from these. Thinking about the girl character, I hadn't really thought on a set age for her as of yet - I don't think she should be too young, as she needs a level of maturity in order to engage with the bear; at the same time she shouldn't be too old i.e. late teens as that comes with an arrogance and a wishing to disassociate with parents, and so it might be unbelievable that the girl would want to follow her dad out on a hunt. I think a middle grounds of between 12 - 14 would be realistic. With this in mind she would be starting to develop a bit more of a curved figure which would lend itself nicely to these garment ideas - as opposed to having a draped material like those seen in the next set of images, which would completely cover her figure.

2. Taken from the film 10,000BC, I just really like this girls style, there's a lot of embellishment which dates the scenes nicely, and the materials used are a lot more realistic than the cliché leopard print number that cave-people are sometimes adorned in. Although as mentioned before I wouldn't like to make anything too intrusive to the girl's shape, I think there are still some elements of design here that I could borrow. I really like the idea of the dreaded hair as well, as it seems plausible that hair would naturally develop into this kind of matted style.

3. Which leads us on to the last set of images. The guys hair here is the more typical style of dreaded hair - I really like the rustic feel to it, along with the beads and the way it's tied, I think it's a great aesthetic. However for the girl, I felt perhaps something a bit shorter might be more suitable - to add to a sense of youth and inexperience. I love Brea Grant's hair in the other image here.. she looks hot! There's a great kind of messy.. but still considered style going on; it's too thought out to work on a guy, but on her it looks great, and adds a cute factor to her. I'll definitely play with these ideas.