Design Stages!

Despite being a straight-forward narrative with a simplistic setup, an important aspect we're still working with is the designs - since the visual aesthetics are kept to a minimum for Flash (where it is to be animated), easy readability in both the scenes, perspectives, and most of all - characters - is important not only for the audience's attention span but also the humour, which is course an integral part of the movie.

Today, we met up at the usual time and place - 10am in B124. Since Tom and Phil were missing in action yesterday, we had to post-pone our plans, but nevertheless, we made headway! Our plan today was to record both sound effects and voice acting in the recording studio but unfortunately it was booked up today; Andy however brought it to our attention that we need to suss out our character's profiles before heading on and he was right. 

Zodac star signs, as he recommended, were a good starting point for drawing the personalities, behaviours, likes and dislikes etc forward. We decided the clumsy Australian be named Bruce (despite it never being mentioned throughout the story), and be an Aeris - a masculine, neurotic/task orientated, positive star sign. For the protagonist himself - the inferior, extroverted corner-dweller, we're still in the process of filling in his personality to the fullest.

We also decided to keep consistency in check. Originally, the film opened up in a 1900s silent-film era title screen - following with a monotone, scratched film. The design style was ditched since consistency ran awry with the presence of urinals and characters dressed in present-day clothing.

In the afternoon, we decided to work further on character designs. Phil and Kamil worked on digitising the designs in Illustrator, and I did turn-arounds for the character Bruce - although his clothing design were to be changed at that stage from a jacket to a white vest.

Speaking of designs, here are Kamil's works so far:

Side view of the urinals.

Behind view of the urinals - the wall is transparent.

Profile view of the urinals and the cubicle.

Semi-final design for the presenter.

Early sketches.

Various face designs - inspired from multiple CGi films.

Designs for the protagonist.

Tests for the proportion.

Cleaned up illustration for the scene - note the brick wall.

Early sketches of the protagonist.

Three urinal scene.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing some further sound designing. Sarah, our producer, may or may not be there depending on her games for Net Ball. The room will be booked out for Wednesday and Thuresday to do sound effects and voice recording, respectively.