September 29, 2010

From verdant murk emerged a smirking turtle




In the Huntington Library's Chinese Garden there is a giant, green pond. Over the pond is a bridge called The Bridge of the Verdant Mist. And in the pond there is a turtle.

Jenette and I visited the Gardens over the weekend. It was really, really hot. My deoderant melted in my backpack. But that's another story.

September 10, 2010

Bla bla bla ART!

I felt bad about all the spewing on the last post so here's some more art. A while back I studied some movies to get ideas for the Grover's eyes. These are from Chicken Little and Finding Nemo. They're really just modeling notes for myself and I wasn't planning on posting them but I guess it's all part of the proccess and that's interesting too, right? So here you go.



My main concern was whether or not I could get enough expression out of the characters without giving them eyebrows. None of the fish in Nemo have actual eyebrows and they all have extrememly expressive faces so I think I'll be able to pull it off.

Late Night Epiphany

I think I mentioned earlier that The Grove has gone through some rewrites, but I'm not sure if I mentioned that my biggest concern right now is that the changes I made in order to better explain things actually made the story a more complicated. It kind of sounds like I'm moving backwards, but let me just say that if I can get this stuff to work then the film will be way cooler than it was before.

That being said, I've come to realize that in order for the film to succeed it needs to be really attractive visually. I've noticed that there are films that LOOK really cool and because they're so interesting to look at you watch the whole thing. And then when the film is over you say "Wow. That was really cool. And really pointless." Kind of like living wallpaper, right?

And there are also films that have really great stories and could be really memorable, except that they looked so bad that you couldn't take them seriously and you gave up after the first however many minutes/seconds/whatever. I'm not saying that The Grove is one of those films, but I can say that it has the potential to be if I don't step it up visually. The problem is that the whole first half is extrememly dependant on plants and pay-offs, that is, a whole bunch of seemingly random things happen and you don't learn what they are until later on and then you say "Oh, THAT'S what that was. I get it!" I love when that happens in movies and it makes me really excited that this film has the potential to do that too. But the only way to keep the audience invested with all this random nonsense going on is by making the things that they're watching look REALLY good. I really want people to say "I have no idea what's going on but it doesn't bother me yet." The "yet" is the key because I don't necessarily want to attract an audience that is into watching wallpaper. Maybe I should say that I want people to think "I hope this is going somwhere because I'm enjoying watching it but I don't want to be disappointed by it when it's over."

So, I know what you're saying now. You're saying "But Jacob, a bad story will always be a bad story, no matter how cool it looks, and you can't hide your story flaws behind flashy visuals." I couldn't agree more. BUT you can't deny the power of a hook. After all, "The hooooook brings you baaaaaaaaaaaaack" (Blues Traveler, people. Come on.) And in general the hook should be your story. But since my story is so slow to get going, I need another hook to get people to the story. What do you call those things that attract the fish? The little rubber things that flop around in the water and the fish think it's food and they bite it and get the hook along with it and then get pulled out of the water and get their skin peeled back and their heads chopped off? Tackle? No, a lure? I'm not a fisher, obviously. Anyway, I need that. Really, I feel like I need that in all my art, but that's another seemingly endless rant. SHEESH. Anyway...

All that nonsense is to say that last night as I was falling asleep I had an image flash into my mind of Grovers that looked better than any I had come up with in all my color tests and the thing that was different was that they didn't look like Fruit Loops. They had more of an edge. And I think if I could base the overall palette of The Grove more on these sort of colors it would have more of the appeal that I'm looking for.

Bla bla bla, bla BLA bla bla.


So here it is. The top row is the set that I had decided on before, the middle row is the set from my dream, and the bottom row is that same set but with the contrast narrowed down just a bit to bring them closer together.

September 6, 2010

The Grove has birds



One of the changes to the story was the addition of a couple minor characters, and one of those is the Grove Birds. There were always birds in the grove, but one in particular that originally made a small cameo has since been developed, combined with another instance of birdage, and turned into two individuals that pretty much make up the bird population, at least as far as this story goes. They're both the same species so they pretty much look identical, and they don't have names yet, but I've decided that Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are not options.

The bird is based on the toco toucan, but I didn't want them to look exactly like a specific species of bird. But in exploring colors I found that the best combination was really the one that the actual bird has already. So, basically, God did it right the first time. That one is bird "Re". My other favorite is bird "A", which might look too much like Zazu from The Lion King. Granted, he doesn't look as much like Zazu as bird "C" does, but I don't know...

Ups, Downs, and All Arounds.

It's been a while. In the last few months I've finished storyboads on The Grove, gone on a few little trips around California, applied for jobs and heard nothing, taken on some freelance work, and rewritten The Grove completely. Well, not completely, but the story has gone through quite a few changes since I finished the storyboards and at this point I'm not sure how many of the changes actually help. The creative proccess is kind of depressing that way. Never the less, the changes ARE exciting as far as I'm concerned, and since being excited about a project beats feeling depressed and defeated about it, my free time has been spent putting energy into developing the fun parts while ignoring the problems and hoping that they'll just work themselves out. That's a healthy attitude, right?

I'll be posting some of the new developements soon, but to start out, howabout some more Grover colors? I think I've narrowed it down. I basically took the Do Re Mi from the last post and cooled down the dark orange and warmed up the yellow. My wife likes the second row, I think I prefer the first. Those two are so close though that it might just depend on the lighting. You really could get away with saying that the top row is just the middle row under an umbrella on a foggy day. (And, actually, the blue one IS the same color.) So I think it's safe to say that the final models will end up looking a lot like those.