On Hiatus

You may have noticed the complete lack of updates! Since finishing my studies at University, Poy has been put on hold for the time being. Meanwhile, here's a poster I made for the film at my end of year exhibition (though it was only viewable in an unfinished form).

Poy Alpha

This is where I am so far.

After Effects

Recently I learnt how to use 3D layers in After Effects. This will allow me to put some depth into shots by layering artwork in 3D space and moving a camera through them.

Here's a test render of the technique:



This is a work in progress of the opening shot to my film, which involves a camera travelling through the city:

Colour Studies 2

Here are some more colour studies for shots in my film. Although the backgrounds will follow a similar painterly feel, the characters will be animated in flash and have a much cleaner look to them.

Character Sheets

Here are the final character sheets I submitted for my preproduction portfolio.



If you compare them with the early character drawings I was doing during the Summer last year you can see how far along the character has developed since.

Colour Studies

Here are a couple of colour studies I've done for the film. I'm not too great with colour so it would be great to get some feedback to help me out.

Fishy 2

Coloured in that fish.

http://fargalex.co.uk/poy/animations/fish2.html

I'll try making the fins on another layer and then making them transparent.

Concept Art 2

Here's some more concept art. I'm trying to improve my work on environments but I'm having a bit of a hard time as I feel I'm not very good with colour.

Poympkin

I had a go at making a Poy Pumpkin! She's looking a bit sinister here.

Fishy

Here's some linetest animation for a fish.

http://fargalex.co.uk/poy/animations/fish.html

I'm out of practice and had to restart this 3 times, I can't seem to get the hang of making the fish look like it's doing a convincing tailflap. Any advice?

Poylasticine

I got my hands on some plasticine and made a Poy model. Unfortunately the legs came out really rubbish and her face is shaped a bit weirdly but it was fun to rekindle my youth!

Day of the Fish

The theme I decided to go with when I started making Poy was "coping with loss". This theme has stayed pretty constant throughout my development process but the content of the plot varied until I had a solid idea. The story I have now takes some influence from the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (Dia De Los Muertos) festival, where a celebration of remembrance and prayer for those who have died takes place every year. It is believed that the souls of the dead visit the living during this time.

I adapted this for Poy - the idea being that when people die, their soul escapes from their bodies in the form of flying fish and on the day of the dead festival they fly through the town in which the main character resides. The basic plot for the film was that Poy's mother had died prior to the animation and upon noticing her soul flying past on the day of the dead she sets after it. This brought up the issue of how I would be able to explain the concept of souls/fish and how the audience would know it was Poy's Mother she was in pursuit of.

My initial resolution to this was to open the animation with a pan across a wall mural depicting people dying and their souls escaping in the form of fish, then to cut to Poy holding a photo of herself with her late Mother. The problems here are that opening a short film with a pan across a wall mural would frankly be boring, use up time and that Poy holding a photograph is a poor way of conveying the plot and a bit cliché.

The solution I have now is to open the film with Poy beside her Mother on her death bed, passing away and her fish escaping. This would make for a more interesting introduction to the film and should be easier for whoever is watching to catch on to the idea that the fish is a soul.

Poy Poy Poy Poy

An odd bit of concept work that I started and never finished - it's just Poy 4 times with herself. I guess the idea was to try a bit of interaction and characterisation. The inspiration came from this amazing picture by this super mega artist. Perhaps I will colour it at some point!

Super Sculpey

As part of our brief we are to produce a model of our character using clay/super sculpey/plasticine/etc. I am waiting until I can get my hands on some plasticine before I create a proper model, but for now here is a super sculpey Poy figure. Thankyou to my friend Sonia (who kindly did the voice work in Clouds) for supplying the sculpey!

Watercolours

I thought it would be nice to try out some watercolour concepts for the film. Unfortunately I'm useless at painting but these are my first attempts regardless:

I've been considering using watercolours to create some of the backgrounds in the film..perhaps this would be easier replicated using some Photoshop techniques. ANYWAY, I'm sure I'll try my hand at this again soon, it was nice to colour something on paper for a change.