Premise | Reflective Statement

Exciting, but yet difficult is how I would describe my experience with the Premise project. Right off the start I knew already what kind of story I would go for. I had a clear storyline in mind and how I would tackle it, so I was rather excited to get started already. I actually thought that my initial story idea was good; however, I did not know it was too linear. I was open to suggestions from my tutors and they taught me roughly how to properly develop a story. For this “lesson” I am really grateful for.
Throughout the entire project I did not really experience any serious hardships and creative barriers since I knew already what I wanted and whenever I needed inspiration I had many resources up my sleeve to look at already. I noticed myself that I started taking detailing the character even more into consideration. Before I had a very simplistic design, however this project made me care more and more about small details on a character which eventually makes them what they are.
At the end of the day, I am rather happy with what I came up with and how it turned out except for the model which I could have put more effort into to let it look more ready for an upcoming animation. The Premise project was a fun and exciting experience since you are asked to start from nothing and end with something you can be proud of showing other people. It definitely broadened my horizon in terms of self-dependent working and I am really grateful for this experience.

Premise | Final Crit Presentation

Premise | Updated Script & Animatic

Premise | Character Concept Art & Matte Painting

After much consideration what colour I should use for both of the character, I ended up choosing 1 and 5 respectively. To have a better understanding how they will look like in detail I decided to draw them with a certain pose. In addition to that I made a fitting matte painting for each of the characters. Last but not least I came up with the title "Long Way Home" for my Premise project.

Premise | Character Turnaround & Orthographs

After my initial sketches for my Premise characters I decided to add even more details to them such as personalized ornament patterns and additional accessories including the patterned gloves fitting the winter theme of the story and for the male character the bands on his back making him feel more "out of this world". Then I created the turn around for those characters for a better understanding how they will look like precisely. 

As for the colorization, I chose to go for monochromatic colour schemes since I want my characters to have a more simplistic look. I tried many colour schemes and ended up choosing the red-purple for the female and the darkblue-green scheme for the male character. I then tried various combinations of the colors on the actual characters and came up with the ones shown below numbered 1 to 8. I must say as my personal favourites I would go for number 4 for the boy and number 7 for the girl which in my opinion would match really well together. 

As my final step before moving into modelling I created orthographs for the characters as well. They are created in Illustrator with fine, clean lines and less details than the character turn around to keep a clean image of how the character model should look like without  the additions.

Premise | Sketches #3

After revisiting my last sketches I decided to combine some of the character features, adding some traditional Lithuanian ornaments and came up with some new, improved and final ideas. I personally like number 3 for the male and 5 for the female character the most. My next step will be the further development of the final characters into turnarounds with fitting colourization.

 As for my environment development I will be mainly focusing on areas surrounding mountains. The importance of the colour pick especially for the aurora lights should not be underestimated since they will determine and lead the mood and the atmosphere immensely. The following sketches are experiments for determining the harmony between the colours for the environment.

Premise | Sketches #2

Continuation of character development. After a while I noticed that my characters feel too plain, so I had to give it a try to give more authenticity to my character robes. As for so to personalize them more I added traditional Lithuanian ornaments and accessories. Each and every single ornament have different meaning.

Premise | Script

Premise | Interim Critique

Premise | Sketches

Exploration of my early character development.

Premise | OGR

Premise | Idea

Among the five ideas I came up with for the Premise project, I decided in further developing the fantasy based story of a character receiving a mysterious call telling it to reach the top of a mountain. This concept was born even before the actual project came up and will include my personal story.
While I was developing my personal blog I stumbled upon the concept of the nightsky and bright stars which I later on combined with parts of my life out of pure curiosity. To my surprise the further I thought this idea through, the more I fell in love with it and eventually came to my mind that I will someday make a project out of it. Instead of creating a full animation I will only make some sequences for the Premise project. The story will show the difficulties and hardships in one's lifes, but also hope and development by learning from failures in order to reach something greater. The animation will be placed in a cold and harsh area with blizzards resulting in shivering bones which provides a perfect set showing the troubles of life.

I will be modelling the environment and the character whereas the character will be fully rigged, however, I will be laying extra focus on character movement and facial expressions. As mentioned before only sequences will be created such as the protagonist walking up the mountain and so on. As for the camera movement it will be mostly stationary, monitoring the entire scene without moving. Some of them might be from the distance observing the character and other ones might follow  the character showing either side, front or top view.

Influence map

Early exploration sketches