Spoke too soon!

So it turns out saying in my previous post that my animatic was finished was untrue After some feedback there was a missing piece of logic in the story, which is why would the scientist go back the second time to shoot the wasp? This has been addressed by making him short sited.

So now when he shoots the wasp the first time by accident he then puts his goggles to look at the ray gun and realises its set to enlarge. Then the second time he presses the button (the wrong button) to put the ray gun in shrink mode but has no effect, however he cannot tell until he looks at the ray gun after making the same error at the beginning.

https://vimeo.com/252729985

 

Hopefully everything here makes sense now.

Next I want to fix a texturing issue with the wasp where some of it was blurry. I also want to add a moving mouth so make it look a little more interesting and dynamic. The scientist rig is completely done so I’m very close to animating.

 

 

Final Animatic and Progress

This will hopefully be the last version of my animatic after re-doing everything. Very happy with it and has a lot of potential for good character and animation and some laughs.

 

For inspiration on the ray gun designed I’ve looked at several designs of toy ray guns in the 1950’s and 60’s for inspiration e.g.

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My final (or very very close) design of the ray gun

References

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Laser01rev. (2009). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/chipfork/sounds/72639/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Insect – Bee – Stereo. (2015). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/nebulousflynn/sounds/269047/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

hmm oh. (2012). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/esperar/sounds/170778/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Gasp. (2016). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/bacruz666/sounds/341908/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Whimper_Gasp_1_Male. (2015). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/Drkvixn91/sounds/318077/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

06101 scared male long scream. (2015). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/328925/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Male_pant. (2014). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/TreyHolton/sounds/238307/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Huh. (2016). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/Topschool/sounds/360458/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Malfunction Static. (2017). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/dotY21/sounds/384132/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Button Pressing. (2014). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/sjnewton/sounds/256566/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

grrr. (2017). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/brunchik/sounds/400783/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Sigh, male. (2016). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/chrillz3r/sounds/336539/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

male_hum. (2016). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/mahakush/sounds/368817/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Tool Box. (2014). [online] freesound. Available at: https://freesound.org/people/NWSP/sounds/240743/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

TOY COLLECTIONS. (n.d.). [image] Available at: http://www.marknagata.com/toys/01/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Reddit (2017). A boy shows off his ray gun, around the 1950s. [image] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/ColorizedHistory/comments/44h4az/a_boy_shows_off_his_ray_gun_around_the_1950s/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

Pinterest (n.d.). [image] Available at: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/434738170249528985/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2018].

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Overdue update!

Since my last post a lot has change and is still rapidly changing.

I re-designed my character because he was quite unappealing. My main challenge was that I was attached to the idea of him being an egghead (literally) which got in the way of creating an appealing character. This is him as of now:

After some feedback it seems he still needs some work. He’s more appealing than previously however he could still be improved. I think it involves mostly the face, I think the nose could be more round and the eyes should be larger to avoid the beady look, I implemented this look to begin with to make him look more shy and timid, but this can be done with facial expressions easily with larger eyes and such. I’m still unsure about the body, it goes out almost in an hour glass shape with wide(ish) hips which is what female characters usually have so I’m going to experiment with proportions.

This is the current state of my project:

I received some feedback recently that opened my eyes to the state of my project. Its simple to mundane and boring. I’ve been given a blank slate to work from and I come up with a partially unappealing scientist who mixing test tube fluids and runs from a wasp.

I think my problem was that I had an exciting mess of ideas and themes at the start and was focused on stripping it down to be more concise but the fun element was taking out in the process. Now that I look at it, it just seems like its missing that factor.

I realized something a mistake I made that seems stupidly obvious now. I wanted to have a mad evil scientist doing a mad experiment that is scared of wasp but I changed it because hard to feel sympathy or be related to a character with evil intentions. So I went for a mundane scientist when I could had just went for a mad scientist (simply take out the evil part…).

In summary I need to add some spice to the mix, as I’m writing this i’m thinking all sorts of things he could be doing: building a bomb, genetically modifying a wasp, making a forcefield so the wasp cannot get to him or trying to ressurect a dead braing. I think with this new directions i’m going to have a lot more fun animating it. The only problem is that I can do a complete 180 on my project and change it drastically because I no longer have the time for that. My project has potential but i just have to find it.