Lost Boy: Rotoscoping - Initial Tests

After my meeting with Phil I think the best direction to go in with Lost Boy is essentially making the film twice as in to get the sketchiness that I am going for I will rotoscope over all the frames and for the parts where the exaggeration is dialled up I will 2D animate that part by rotoscoping over the 3D parts and compositing them in after effects by bringing down the opacity of the 3D elements. To get the 2D parts to mesh nicely with the 3D elements I will colour pick the texture of the characters once their textures are all laid out and use that to draw in the colour of the exaggerated parts, If needs be I can also use Maya to my advantage and use spheres put in place to help with motion capture for elements turning around.

These tests were done by using the generic male character and turning him around with a white background to represent the white space along with the Animators Toolbar by Patrick Deen which turns Photoshop into a nice little 2D animation package . As these are tests I kept everything very lose by adopting continues line that Vicky thought us in life drawing and didn't erase anything, this enabled me to just have fun with it and I really like when the black drawn in lines went over the boundary of the 3D model as it looks nice meshed against the white space background.

I am going to continue doing more exaggerating tests by morphing and bulging elements, drawing In the negative space around the character instead, animating the shadows, lighting tests and also start doing compositing tests in After Effects.

Generic Male turnaround with Rotoscope

Rotoscope Line Work only

Lost Boy: Mrs Pratt's Art Room - Initial Tests in Maya

I have spent some time experimenting in Maya to try and translate the concept art from the art room into 3D. I started by getting random shapes in Maya and then laying out the UVs for all the objects and then unfolding them together, I then saved a UV snapshot and simply cropped out parts of the concept art and laid it over the top as a texture in photoshop. With some of the objects I messed around with the presets for the AIStandard in Arnold such as blood, gold and honey which gave some nice refractions to the objects.  I also wanted the sketchyness of the concept art to translate too so I made a simple alpha map in photoshop of a brush with lots of texture and attached that to a sphere, with the second image I was trying to make an alpha layer but it didn't go to plan however I actually like the way that it looks, it didn't show up in the render but does in the perspective view.

I am going to continue experiments with the art room to get the feel of the concept art by adding a depth of filed pass to show some atmospheric perspective, adding more textured brushes as alpha maps and give a whirl of using render layers.

Rendered Image 

Screenshot of failed alpha map

Texture in Photoshop

Brush Stroke Alpha Map in Photoshop

Lost Boy: Present Graeme - Model Progress

Lost Boy: Mrs Pratt's Art Room - Concept Art

Over the summer I did a few more designs for the art room, going by what Alan said about suggesting things rather than actually having them in plain sight as it is more feasible with modelling, I like the idea of having the art room with mounds of objects, but having a hint of something art room related like an easel, desks or paintbrushes mended into the mounds, I  think the mounds being different colours make it pop nice against the white background making it feel like an abstract painting while representing the multicoloured nature and free spirit of Mrs Pratt's art room, I think it feels almost kind of glitchy which I think represents memory nicely. I want to explore further with this concept art by creating and testing it in Maya.

Digital Paitning 1

Digital Painting 2

Traditional Watercolour Painting