Maquettes Final Designs

Here is the finalised digital paint up of the actress. A few subtle alterations were made to the marquette and there are some colours changes from the previous attempt.

Here are some final designs for the Mail Man that was designed, sculpted and painted by Josh.

This expression was designed for the scene where the Mail Man realises that the package he has just posted may have contained a bomb.

Finally, here is a picture of the two characters together for a scale comparison.

Maquette Test Colouring

Above is a quick initial digital paint up of my Maquette.

Colour Tests.

Using the marquettes as a guide I have developed some 2D colour tests. This helped me to see all the different colour combinations so I could decide what worked and what didn't. The hardest character to colour was the Actress. We wanted her to look elegant and glamorous in a simple dress and we knew we wanted her to have blond hair. In the end we chose the light white dress colour and white gloves. As we want the audience to like this character we felt the white gave her an angelic quality. Below are some colour variations for the Actress. Finally we picked the colour sheme in the middle picture and the narrower dress shape.

The other characters were easier colour. Both the Mail Man and the Usher were coloured to made the uniforms we found in our research. The Little Old Lady has a more colourful design as we wanted her to seem a bit quirky.

I'm quite happy with these designs and I like how each character has a unique and easily identifiable colour scheme. The next stage will be to digitally paint the character marquettes.

Secondary Characters

Here are some quick initial designs for some secondary characters in the film. One of the main obstacles for the Mail Man is a large and bad tempered Theatre Usher.

We want this character to be large enough to fill a doorway. His uniform will be red with a gold trim. I'm not happy with this design just yet, I think he needs to be bulkier and more hunched. After doing some more quick sketches we plan to make a scaled down marquette to finalize the design and see how the character looks in three dimensions.

This little old lady plays a small part in our film. In one scene the Mail Man rushes to an elevator in order reach the Actress's dressing room, where he believes the package is. Waiting for the elevator he notices a sweet old lady standing next to him. Running out of time he takes the stairs. After climbing 4 floors the Mail Man emerges ,exhausted, only the find that the old lady has beaten him by taking the elevator. Once again I did some quick initial drawings and then moved onto a plasticine sculpt. The old lady is very small in comparison to the other characters. Below are some development pics.

The above picture shows the old lady (work in progress) next the the finished marquette of the Mail Man sculpted by Josh.



Background Characters

One of the main themes in our film is the 'Tick Tick Tick' sound of the package. We plan to use this sound effect to help build tension and suspense as film progresses. Even though the package isn't with the Mail Man for most of the film the tick will follow him as he rushes around the theatre.
I had the idea of incorporating the tick sound into the actions of some background characters found in the lobby.

As the Mail Man runs into the lobby of the theatre, he will look around a see a Bar Tender shaking a cocktail to the same beat as the tick. Then the camera will swing around and we'll see a small kid with a hypnotized expression on his face playing with a paddle ball. Again the ball hitting the bat will be to the same beat as the tick.

Another idea we had was to have an unusually large number of clocks in the theatre the remind the Mail Man that time isn't on his side.

Finished Marquette - Actress

Here are some turnaround images of the actress marqette finished.

Character Design

I will be designing the actress character for my new film while Josh designs the Mail man.
Early on we agreed The actress would be slender, blond and glamorous.
Below are a few initial drawings that we did to give us a rough idea of what the character will be like.

After doing some initial sketches i moved onto creating a 1:1 scale Marquette sculpted in plasticine. I find it easier to design characters by sculpting them in three dimensions. Doing this helps me see how the character looks when photographed and will help later on when building the puppet.

I started by sculpting a test for the head which can be see in the background of the first picture. The softness of the aluminium wire armature allowed me to keep tweaking the pose as I worked.

3rd Year Film 'OPENING NIGHT'

Hi, I'm Nathan Flynn a Stop Motion Animation student, currently in my third year at the University of Glamorgan in Cardiff.
In this blog I will be documenting the Pre-production and Production of my new film 'Opening Night'. I will once again be collaborating with my brother Joshua Flynn and you can see some of our previous work at http://www.sculpt-double.co.uk/

Our film will me made using the process of Stop Motion Animation and we aim for it to be roughly 3 minuets long.
The story is about a US Mail man who delivers a package to a theatre only to then realise the package may have contained a bomb. The film will follow the mail man as he scrambles desperately to retrieve the package before it is too late.

Above are some research images we have found for the mail man.Our film will be set in the 1950's and these pictures show the style of uniform worn at the time.

Another character featured in the film will be an actress. She will be starring in a bright new show due to open in the theatre and will be the recipient of the package. Again we have been looking at 1950's era photographs and classic looking hair styles for inspiration.