Character model Transition images

All my work so far for the narrative project

All of the work I have done towards the narrative project so far. As the final crit is moved to January I will be stripping the character models down and re rigging and skinning them. All because on our original models the History was still present causing a huge amount of error's to appear throughout the animating and rigging process.

Character designs.
I was in charge of the character designs for the animation. Originally we planned on creating one character each but the styles were way too different.

Oliver designs

Assistant designs

Character Models

 
Older storyboard

Rendered Stills and rough animated opening from animation

 

 

 

 

Movie Adaptions: The Hobbit Movie review

The Hobbit Adaptation Review
The Hobbit (1937, J.R.R Tolkien)
The Hobbit Trilogy ( 2012-2014, Peter Jackson)


Following on from the critically acclaimed Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins,  one of the major characters in the LOTR books and the lore of Middle earth, on his adventure to the misty mountain and his battles along the way.


The Hobbit trilogy upon release split the LOTR community into two parties. Those that adored the films and those who loathed them. Not only did Peter Jackson decided to take a 300 page novel and turn it into a 3 film long epic. He decided to remove certain characters that were integral parts of the story, change certain events and time frames, remove scenes and add character's that did not belong in the story entirely. This is why these movies are a great choice when discussing Hollywood adaptions of Novel's and why so many of them fail to deliver when the books are acclaimed by millions of people around the world.

 

Added Stories and Character's
As there are many deviations from the Novel I will only be referring to the ones that are the most noted among The Hobbit fans. Starting with the whole necromancer side story. In the films a side story of sorts appears, Where Gandalf runs off to deal with a hidden threat that seems to be fueling the orcs and scaring animals away from the mountain. What we get from this is a deeper look into the story of Sauron's return and how he became so powerful in the LOTR movie's. This storyline, while adding interesting set pieces. Serves no other function then to link the Hobbit to Lord of the Rings and show characters that every one knows.
In the books Gandalf knows of the Necromancer, but there wasn't a story where he ran off to deal with him. The inclusion of this story allows the film maker to not only add more urgency to the story, allows people like Elrond, Galadriel and Radagast to have much more major parts in the story.

Radagast himself is another story. In the Movie's he plays a major part in the story. Providing the hobbit's a distraction with a chariot driven by rabbits (a complete departure from anything Tolkien described) and assisting Gandalf in his fight with the necromancer. However in the books Radagast is only mentioned off the cuff when Gandalf is talking to the Dwarves "my good cousin Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood". These scene's show how Jackson took a minor part of the story and made it larger then it needed to be.

The Inclusion of Legolas and the Love story.

Another major issue with the Films is  the inclusion of one who didn't need to be in the movie and another who wasn't in the books at all. As everyone will know. Legolas was a fan favorite after the LOTR movies. Increasing the love of elves across the fan base. Even effecting people's characters in some games. (Night elf hunters in WoW increased after the movies). This means that it would only be logical to bring him into the prequel films to increase the hype and marketing for the movie, as he is a familiar character and will bring in people who don't know the Hobbit books and are just going to see it for it's relation to LOTR. Then we get onto the character designed purely for these movies. Tauriel (Evangeline Lily). A female elf who was, in my opinion an amazing addition to the world. While her character wasn't fleshed out too much, I still found her to be an exciting character. However what I didn't like along with many other people was the forced love triangle. Kili the Dwarf falls in love with Tauriel, who is loved by Legolas. This relationship was not present in the books due to the elves not being involved in the story until the very end, and Kili's death was only written in to emphasis this story.




As I said before there are many other minor deviations from the novels. Moving events around, Azog being a villain, The Dwarves designs, Biblo's attitude at the start of the movie etc etc. A lot of the fans hate the trilogy due to all of these changes and the fact that Jackson needlessly padded out a small children's book into a 3 film trilogy, purely due to marketing and being able to make money off of them.

However when it comes to representing the world of the Hobbit, which was written before the LOTR series, we get more of the beautiful landscapes that LOTR had become famous for, more interesting characters, more orcs (although mostly CGI this time round) and the return of characters that people loved in the original trilogy.

Some people hate these movies but I myself love them and will always think of them as separate from the novel, making the changes just part of another story.

Character Design OGR: (Scheduled)

Character Design OGR

Oliver Redesign: Starting with color

Its not quite finished yet, but these are just to get an idea of what he will look like when colored. 

Assistant: Starting to paint

Starting to color the Assistant now. Referring back to the 1920's reference's I used for the original design.

Character Tutorials: Work Back log.

The Backlog of work from our Character sessions since the start of the year,


Character Session’s

Assistant design: Line art + Orthograph

The assistant is the new character that we are introducing to replace the father we originally had. As we are changing the story, it was suggested that we ditch the father in favor of something a little different. 

                                                   

This is the new character's design. I looked into the costume's for circus assistants in the 1920's and most of them had this kind of swimsuit, design with frills and bow's around it so I thought it would be interesting to try and include them in the design. 

                               

As with Oliver, I will be refining theses designs after the color stage. (I will also add the feet back in when I get to that stage as I ran out of room when drawing them) 

Oliver Redesign: Line art + orthograph

After the OGR and a tutorial with Alan, it was suggested that we re design our characters to fit into one cohesive style and to match our world more appropriately. This led to all the character design being handed over to myself.

This character is the redesign of our original character Oliver. Moving away from my own style and more towards and cartoony style. I choose to do them this way as it seemed more appropriate to our funnier, cuter story, which has also been improved upon since the OGR.

                                             

As you can see he is very similar clothes wise to my original design, just in a slightly different style. 

                                 

The orthograph for this character. I will be straightening them up and refining them when I get past the color stage. 

Maya Poses Complete

Maya poses: Middle and After