Mazed

For the past few weeks I have been working on a group project called 'Elowen and the Bramble Bush'. As director I have produced a storyboard. Another of the main things I have done is finalizing the character designs, and currently I am working on the layouts.

The project has been extremely challenging, especially due to the short time in which we have to produce the animation. We have been given a long and complex script which we have had to shorten into 90 seconds, whilst still trying to keep the story clear.

The animation will be for iPhones, and so we have had to keep the these small dimensions in mind when designing. We have until early May to finish the animation, so we have 3 weeks to complete A LOT of work.

For our project we decided to do a tapestry-themed animation, whereby the story scrolls along the screen. It also means we can have simple characters and we plan to animate in a cutout style which will hopefully speed up the actual animation process.

Below are the finalized character designs I produced, using the character designs submitted by the rest of my group (see 2nd image). This was necessary to do as we all produced the character designs almost in isolation and when put together they were not of the same style. I tried to stay as true to the original designs as possible whilst altering them to fit the style and also cutting them up in a uniformed way. The horses are my original designs. They are created in Flash and in a cut-out style, meaning that each piece of them (arms, head etc) is a separate symbol 

Final character designs

The character designs submitted by my group

 Above are the designs made by my group, I've listed their blogs and roles in the project below:


Producer: Joseph Stout (blog) - Gertha and Elowen original character designs
Art Director: Ben Langham (blog) - Bran Dhu and Pellar original character designs
Animator: Grayling Breckon (no blog available) - Prince and Chough original character designs
Sound and editing: Josh Keen (no blog available) - Witch original character design