Supporting Documents- 'Making Of' and Character Bible

Atom pancakes would like to share the documents supporting our animation, they feature the behind-the-scenes which helped us produce our final short.

Making of - The Final Chapter

If you like the character Arthur Winters, this document will explain how our studio decided upon the design and show some of the early stage drawings of him .

The Final Chapter - Character Bible

Enjoy!

Dream Sequence Light Tests

With animation already starting and some minor tweaks to do in either the rig or the environment, I had some time to explore lighting,therefore I have began doing some light tests on the dream environment. this environment is still in choosing stages.
Firstly, we were thinking of having a total blank space, then adding the environment with a spotlight focusing on the character, and also we thought of having the environment, but with no textures in it.

Here are some light tests I have done with the main different ideas:

BLANK Space

 Render With Default Light Set up

Render With Default Light Set up + Ambient Light 0.4

Render With Default Light Set up + Ambient Light (Range)

 Render With Default Light Set up + Ambient Light 0.5

Night Time With Spotlight

Weekly Roundup - Finishing the Concepts

Today we are presenting our latest concept art on the character and environment. This stage is practically finished, and work is already starting on the final stage of pre-production - Story Boarding / Animatic.

First up, are some colour tests on the character.
Ruben has focused on some variations on the colour, mostly with the clothes and hair.

Jordan has also taken the character and done some detailed paintings.

This one shows a story idea that hasn't been used in the latest story.

Ruben has sinse done the final character design, complete wiht profile sheet...

...and also an action shot!

Now here we have some of the very latest designs, showing the main character dressed up as other types of characters. This is part of an idea in the latest incarnation of the story!

With it is an influence map.

Then finally we have the characters face, having just had his work blown up in front of him!

Next up, we have all the progress on the environment.
Jordan has worked out how the office of our writer is going to look like.

Lastly I am presenting all the final drawings of the important props in the scene.

Although the drawn typewriter is very simple, this will be mostly modeled by eye with this as a rough guide, but using the many reference images, some of which have been posted earlier to get the details in.

A Flock of Pixels

The Weekly Update at Atom Pancakes - Week 5

It has been a strange couple of weeks here at Atom Pancakes after we scrapped our main idea for a short, and went in a completely new direction. At first this seemed like a big step, but now it feels like it was completely the right decision and we are pushing forward into preproduction with confidence and excitement. Today we met on Skype to discuss some design decisions and there were some really positive results. We are all individually working on different aspects, from character design to environment design and script development. At this stage, we present our work to one another and then discuss, critique and improve. Today was a big step on the road to completely preproduction.

Character Design

Firstly we started with character design, an aspect that is headed by Ruben. He showed some incredible sketches and after some talking, we all decided upon a final character. Here is a glimpse at the great design sheets.

We decided upon this design as our final character. He will be developed further and we will be creating a whole bunch of supporting art work to show his character, but this is the start of our final character. We present, Arthur Winters...

Environmental Design

I am head of environmental design and concept art so I've been working on some thumbnails ready to take forward as final artwork. As art director I have to make decisions on style and design. This will start to come to life as I continue into the concept art stage. The sketches below were presented in today's meeting and after some good feedback I'm ready to get some ideas pushed forward.

We have been discussing the setting and time period of the animation and we want our character to have the feel of the Parisian artists that lived in Montmartre. This was also mixed with the idea early 20th century English authors like Tolkein and Lewis.

Later this week we will be presenting more artwork and some completed concepts. So keep an eye out for some great updates.

Script Development

Ethan has been doing a great job on refining our script and getting it ready for storyboarding. This will all take place next week when we are meeting in person to discuss ideas and board the script out in draft. He has also been working on prop design and getting the model sheets ready for the modelling stage. Below is a glimpse at some of the sketches that will soon be drawn up as final prop sheets.

Preproduction feels like it is finally starting to move forward and now that we have resolved our narrative problems we will moving forward quickly and producing some great work in the coming weeks. Keep checking back to stay updated.