My Line Tests

Final scene pencil test

Gryphon shoots out of the clouds and flies off into the distance
In the final version he will be getting smaller into the distance, but that will all be rendered in post production.

final scenes up to 12

Rough Keyframes

More backgrounds.

A couple more finished backgrounds.  The first is the cliff during the storm, which the gryphon falls past in perspective in scene 10 (this background is used with the tree painted out of it for scene 11 too).  The second is for the final scene and is part of a vertical pan.  The box shows actual screen size, the extra image allows for camera movements.

scene 7

Forest Background

The completed background for the forest scene. It was decided that the stream should be removed from the composition for animation purposes.

scene 10

Some more line tests!

This one is the complete inbetweens of Scene 10 in our movie

These are from scene two, the first being a rough line test, the second being a cleaned up version.

These are the roughs of Scene 4, soon to be cleaned up and ready for colouring soon!

Establishing shot background!

 http://tr1ff1d.deviantart.com/art/Gryphon-cliff-establishing-shot-finished-268111997

Phew, finally finished this one.  Just needs Anna's sky dropped into the back :)

*update*  new link so you can view it full size...it won't recognise the address as an image link on this one for some reason, so this is the best I can do.  Maybe just because the file is massive.  (Click the link, not the image)

Jen's painted tree with weather

lightning strike hitting tree
Anna

Baby Gryphon: from concept to character sheet

Over the summer the first doodled ideas of gryphon appeared in my sketchbooks
At this point, I wasn't sure if he or she was male or female or even what his story was. 

Then the image of a very sad and scared gryphon stuck in a tree  came to my mind and the story of baby gryphon  started to be plotted out. 

Early concepts

Early character development sketches

I found an ideal body shape reference for baby Gryphon. He was going to be a gryphon with an owl inspired head and a baby lynx body. 

A lot of research was done on owls and their facial expressions and face structure. 

Baby Gryphon was born. 

Line tests

weather animation

after effects weather animation test. need to work on lightning strike, still doesn't look quite right!
Anna

stormy sky

Final photoshop painting for stormy sky. To be animated in after effects with lightning and rain

Weather refferences

Some reference material for stormy weather, colour, clouds and lightning.

Anna

Background Concept Art - Forest

Some forest concept art for the animation showing several different compositions. The digital painting techniques used have changed slightly throughout.

Colour comparisons

Different possible colour options for the gryphon character against the most common background colours in the film.  Feedback on these at this stage still most appreciated.  We are mostly looking at the pale coloured ones as these stand out best in the changing weather.

Jen

Initial concepts and background art

 Initial sketch of the cliff for the title/establishing shot.  The middle version with clouds at the bottom instead of trees is the one we went for, with the dark one on the left showing what the scene will look like during the storm.

 This is an actual background from the film, still a work in progress at the moment.  It's going to be part of a vertical pan and needs a lot more detail still to make it work when viewed really close up.

 Our film is set in a tropical rainforest environment (with a big cliff) so the above image isn't very relevant in terms of flora, it's just an experiment in creating several moveable layers of an image to create the impression of perspective when they are moved.  This was going to become both increasing complex and limiting to our animation due to time constraints, so we opted for shots that wouldn't require a perspective shift.  Now when our character flies, while the camera does follow him, it's from the side rather than directly behind.

A few concepts of how the tree attaches to the cliff, the style/shape of the cliff, and possibilities for how it all might be textured.  Originally we considered having a 3D element in the film, the tree, and these images would ultimately be projected onto it so it matched the 2D elements in style.  This was again just an added complication, so we simplified the idea down, and removed the 3D work entirely.

Jen