Introduction - 'Pond'

 During the first semester of Year 2, around the end of November I began working with Bryony Evans on her final major film, 'Pond'. She requested some help with her background painting and colour design, and sat with me, explaining her film, style and sharing reference materials with me.  Initially she was unsure of the colour scheme that she wanted, and so was keen for me to start experimenting with colour and trying to achieve a good level of depth perception.
 The first task she set for me was have a play with Photoshop, and see what I could produce using her initial concept sketches as reference, so that she could get an idea of where my skill level lay. After looking at her blog a little, I used this image below as a starting point.

 Personally I was a little worried about my painting skills in Photoshop, but I really liked her film concept and the designs, so I looking at some of the images on her blog I made my first attempt.

 

As you can see, this is not very good at all. However, I really wanted to work on the backgrounds of her film, and so after perusing her blog a little more, I found that she had uploaded one of her own tests. I then tried to replicate her style, and was extremely pleased with the progression from my first study, to this one.

Below is Bryony's background concept art.

And below here is my rendition of her concept art.

Personally, I was really pleased with the outcome of this, especially as I'd never drawn and painted completely in Photoshop before. I tried hard to use layers and brushes, contrast, colour and light to portray a dense forest.

I presented this study to Bryony on the 2nd of December last year and she was pleased and excited to have my help!

After this I was excited and eager to start work on her film, she approached me and asked me to watch Disney's 'Tarzan' over the Christmas break and to look at the colours used in the backgrounds, which I did. She was still unsure of what colour scheme, structural choices and style she'd be emplying in all of her backgrounds, so I couldn't progress much further at that time, other than to keep my Photoshop skills from going rusty. We were to start back work when we returned in the beginning of January 2012, as I had 3 weeks of no lectures I was keen to get a good body of work and prep done in that time.

I had also spent some time in late 2011 helping a 2nd year MA Animation student, Mahmoud Hindawi with his final film, 'The Street Artist'. It was a 2D film done completely on ToonBoom, and he gave me colour sheets and scenes to complete in block colour. It was a simple job but I think it helped him greatly and gave me a better knowledge of animating in ToonBoom studio.

Below is one of Mahmoud's Character colour sheets he supplied me with for a scene.