"How to Defend Against Vikings" - Animatic Sequence

To be updated with extra sound effects and background melody shortly.

Stage & Theatre Props

With the idea of a pop up theatre in mind, I decided it was best to creating a framing device for our stage before proceeding with production. Using some aspects of our prop to frame our stage, I worked out roughly the amounts of space between sky and sea and the action area where our character will be animated.

Figure 1. Theatre Set Idea

Additionally, before compiling the storyboard and moving on with the animatic, it was apparent that our animation was going to need multiple theatre props. Before progressing, I decided on a simplistic hand drawn style that would look much like an amateur pop-up theatre, using wooden colours to contrast our set with faint overlays of real wood textures, as well as incorporating faint tapestry highlights by altering their opacity.

 Figure 2. Prop Sheet #1

   Figure 3. Prop Sheet #2

 Figure 4. Prop Sheet #3

 Figure 5. Prop Sheet #4

With the final hurdles of pre-production coming to a complete close, it is nearly upon us to move on with production completely. Character model progress to be revealed soon!

Updated Storyboard

Character Run and Walk Cycles: 2D Frames

While developing the storyboard for the animation, character poses and actions were needed. When drawing these poses I decided that it would be a useful to create rough frame-by-frame walk and run cycles for our character for later reference.

Figure 1. Basic Walk Cycle

Figure 2. Basic Run Cycle

Orthographic Drawings

With the character complete and pre-production coming to a close, the transition to Maya will be underway shortly. The orthographic views are now ready to go, however I am unsure of the side view regarding the character. Everything is aligned to the best of my ability, but only time in Maya will reveal the mistakes within the drawings before allowing us to address the issues efficiently.

Figure 1. Character Orthographics

Figure 2. Prop Orthographics

Final Prop Concept

A combination of the initial designs for the character prop/weapon left us with the perfect fit our final concept. By splicing initial ideas 2, 4 and 6 from our original sketches (Found HERE), our polished concept incorporates the different aspects which we each individually found appealing. The prop was also rendered using the same style as the character to ensure that the weapon would suit the character and with his appearance.

With the concept now complete, a turnaround for orthographic sheets will be drawn up in succession of the characters. More to follow shortly!

Final Character Concept

After a long process of character design, I have refined my design to produce our final concept with a stylised approach to our character which seems successful.

Orthographic sheets (character turnaround) will be up soon, a long with a finalised concept of the heroes prop in addition to a few simple illustrative poses that are also on their way.

Environment Designs 1

Here are some of the thumbnails I have drawn for the first scene of our animation. The bottom row are some ideas for the monastery, I personally prefer the last image, and the top row are examples of medieval buildings that could be used to build the background of the scene.

As our animation is going to be staged like a pop-up theatre, all of the environments will be made up of image planes positioned at varying depths in the scene, for example in scene one the monastery will be in the foreground.

Here are the designs I created in photoshop for the straw, wood and stone walls included in our animation. 

Poetry Ideas: 2

THERE ONCE WAS A GREAT VIKING WHO CAME IN BY SEA

There once was a gre-ate Viking , who came in by sea
He raided our vial-ages  and challenged our decree
King Alfred, sentenced- him to death as our hearts pound
All across the land mon-astries burnt down to the ground
Their once was a gre-ate Viking, who came in by sea.

As he passed the vill-agers they drew their pitchforks
So he took their pi-itchforks and bent them into sporks!
Englishmen stumbled and crumbled and ran like crazy
Push them down, for the golden crown in his laughing frenzy
He took their pi-itchforks and bent them into sporks.

So they decided to imitate the gre-ate Viking
But a fool brought a cuppa out and ruined the whole thing!
The Englishmen once again staggers through daggers
And runs for Kings Alfreds’ mig-hi-ty soldiers
A fool brought a cuppa out and ruined the whole thing

So soldiers built walls to stop the gre-ate Viking army
The Viking huffed, and puffed and blew the walls down
(note this is where he cracks head on wall) (repeat as last line/ cut music) I said blew the walls down!
The soldiers retreated from their beloved town
There once was a gre-ate Viking, who came in by sea.

Then the soldiers dugout an impassable moat
He built a see-saw from a debris jigsaw and hit it to-stay-afloat
The soldiers ran for King Al-fred’s professional help
The Viking um- enjoyed watching the Englishmen yelp?
The Viking built a see-saw from a debris jigsaw.

So then- ahh. They built a mighty castle so no-body could break in
but the Viking sent a dragon and in a pile of ash it cave in.

AND THEN-
The uh Englishmen tried to plough him in a steam train
But it rebounded off the Viking and nothing was gained

SO AH
The Englishmen shot the Viking with the nearest tanks they could grab
but the shells got caught in-be-tween the Vikings abs

AND THEN… and then
And then they dropped a nu-clear warhead onto the gre-ate Viking
And when the dust clouds fell they could only hear the Viking sing

There once was a gre-ate Viking who came in by sea
The King used all measures but had to write a treaty
The Englishmen faught as hard as they could but had no choice but to flee
They couldn’t hope to stop the Viking so mighty
There once was a gre-ate Viking who came in by sea.

Character Poses

These are some of my sketches of the character in different poses. I drew these to help finalise the character and imagine how he would move and look in 3D.

Concept Art: Viking

Here is a quick demonstration of concept art for the viking character we have produced.

Narrative: Interim Pitch

Prop Development

Now that the character is nearing the end of its design process, it became important to begin developing his main props. Considering our character is a Viking, the most obvious prop will be his weapon. Drawing on previous research for influence, I begun to develop a series of sketches experimenting with shape and style to gain an idea of the final object in which would suit the Viking's character. While sketching, I decided it would be best to create some general ideas in the ideas of broadswords, hammers, and the most obvious, the iconic Viking axe. 

 Figure 1. Axes

Figure 2. Broadswords 

Figure 3. Hammers

It became apparent to me that when designing these weapons, incorporating subtle detail into our character's prop design could be a nice contrast with his simplified forms. Using simple shapes to begin the construction of each thumbnail sketch, the driving concept was to create imaginative weapons that fit the Viking visual style and also would suggest the strength and size of our character. From Figure 1, I like the simple design of sketch 2, but I also like the design of 4 with the subtle details connecting the axe head to the shaft. The most appealing sword from Figure 2 personally is design 3 due to its relatively historic accuracy regarding shape, and that fact that the broadness reflect our character additionally. However with the designs in Figure 3, I had the idea that the hammer could serve as a secondary weapon that could be a prop that is holstered on our characters belt. With this in mind, the simplicity of concept 6 appeals greatly, but in terms of using a hammer as our character main weapon, ideas 1 and 5 fit the bill nicely. 

Colour Scheme Experiments

With the basic forms and costume of our character coming to life, its time to start thinking about colour, and how we want our character to be presented. Knowing that the Vikings were Scandinavian from our research, I knew that using a colder colour scheme would be beneficial for out characters attire. I collected multiple tetrad palettes to begin piecing together the best combinations of colour for our Viking. 

Figure 1.                                               Figure 2.                                             Figure 3.

Figure 4.                                               Figure 5.

From these collections, I used the colour swatches as the base coats for the clothing, altering the saturation and brightness as I went along to make the colourings colder and less vibrant. Figure 1 perhaps seems to be the best fit for our character, using the right blend of the collected colour palette.

Initial Storyboard

In preparation for the pitch, Shan and I have put together a storyboard to visualise our ideas.