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!

Animatic #5

Here is the latest version of our animatic. We've currently got a mixed soundtrack but are in the process of trying to fix a commission. We'd love to know what you think.

Concept Art Update

Today has been a bit of a turning point for Atom Pancakes. We've been struggling and arguing for a while as we try to progress with each stage. But today, we all sat down to edit together and put differences aside. The key to this is really quite simple. We all suggested ideas, tried them out in the edit, if they didn't work they didn't make the cut. So far our first and final act seem to be most resolved. Tomorrow we meet again to work through our second act and things are starting to move towards something final and succinct.

In the meantime we have all been working on other aspects, environments, character modelling and props are all under way and coming along nicely. Yesterday I felt that we really needed another concept, our exterior environment was rather unrealised and so I sat down and worked on the piece below.

It's difficult to bring interest to a shot that needs to be static and somewhat subtle, but hopefully the use of lighting and colour help. This concept not only shows our exterior environment, but demonstrates the introduction shot of animation, as we see Arthur Winters working through the night to finish his book. Below are a few images showing the progression of the piece. This piece really could have benefited from better thumbnail drawings. It was a struggle to develop and with a clearer idea at the outset this could have been simpler.

There will be plenty more to come from Atom Pancakes this week so keep tuned.

Animatic #4 - The Intro

I've re boarded the first act and hopefully it conveys the camera move that we want to establish. It was difficult to show this move within the animatic but if you look at the boards a bit closer hopefully it becomes obvious how the camera moves from item to item. 

Below is the full act in storyboard form, along with the first camera move shown separately for closer inspection.

Animatic 3.5

This is not the next animatic as this was made along side the previous one. I have fiddled with the bits of music which I borrowed from Jordan's animatic and as a result they unsubtly switch between pieces. (It was very roughly done!) So you can pretty much ignore the middle and end as little was done to it other than that, but act 1 was trimmed and re-timed etc.




Anyway, we will be addressing the issues in the previous posts comments in our next animatic.

A Flock of Pixels

Animatic #3

Today, we have been experimenting with ideas for our animatic and modelling more props for our scene. At this stage we are trying to get more life into the piece so that it works really well at this stage. This is the animatic that currently we feel is working best, more tweak will be made but we would like your feedback.

Animatic #2 Sound Update

Apologies for the time this took but I've been sick all weekend and just got a chance to get back to work. After suggestions from Phil, I've made a rough sound mix that hopefully is a bit more fitting. I can't change the edit of the animatic as Ethan has the files, but there are some areas that need a change of pace to fit the music. Suggestions and critique is welcome as always.

The First Animatic

We have been rather quiet for the last couple of weeks, but we have been working hard. We have spent a lot of this time struggling with our story and we have changed a lot. This is always a difficult and stressful stage where progress seems to slow but now it's time to show the animatic and we'd love for as much feedback as possible. This is our first draft, and we'd like you to be as honest as possible, so we can make this work really well.

The music is still currently only temporary as we are trying to contact producers to get a soundtrack mixed fro us. But hopefully this gives you an idea of the style of music we wish to use. 

Meanwhile, we know that while this stage of the project develops, there is plenty of time to get other jobs done. We have started modelling various props as no matter how the story changes, we know that we need a writer and his office.

We'd also like to show the final concept art that will help us create our world.

The Office

Arthur Winters

Weekly Update Week 6 and 7

This blog has been updated in some time and although the little activity here at Atom Pancakes, Pre- Production never stops.  For the past 2 weeks we have been working in different aspects of pre-production: Story, Character, Environment and Prop Design.

Firstly the story has suffered a few changes from the past 2 weeks, where we tried to perfect it to work better in our short animation.  This step of story development it is still far from finished, and even at the present date we have been improving the story. However here is the latest of the scripts available: 

FinalScript_10_LastReWrite

With the Story still in development, many other areas of pre-production are going smoothly, the design part of our world seems to be coming along, as we clearly understand now who our character is? Where does he live and what the time period he belongs to?

Character Design 

From last week, we began to move into the development stage of the character. Until we reached to a design we were all happy with. 

Character Body Silhouettes 

Final Character Development

With the character pretty much developed, we moved into understanding the character in depth. For that purpose, we made a couple of design sheets: such as Turnarounds, Face Expressions Sheet, Props Sheet and Size Sheet, all papers that will help us in further stages of this project in order to get the character right in the 3D World. 

Turnarounds

Face Expressions

Props Sheet

Size Sheet

Some more information has to be done to complete the character, however these sheets will be of great help to move the character from 2D to 3D.

not only character design is going great the environments and respective concept art are also shaping up, and although the story is not definite it, some possible environments have began to be developed. 

Concept Art

The last part of the design work is the props design,  having set our animation in the 1930's we have moved into designing our own props based on actual pictures of those same props in that period. As our animation has slightly stylisation we made sure that the character and the environment and props would fit all together. 

Props Design

Chair Variations

Desk Lamp

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.