Background Art Development

Here are some backgrounds for some of the scenes in my animation. I have incorporated the use of paint and Photoshop editing.

Concept Art Inspiration

Here are some collated images I found of various arctic concept arts that I could draw inspiration from; that had a similar look and aesthetic to I want to try and capture:

                                                   

Anna Baratashvili

 Zoran Art

Nagy Norbert

Nate Hallinan

Here is some concept art from Blue Sky's Ice Age series which again carried a similar look I wanted to repricate:

Finally, concept art from Pixar's most recent release, Frozen:

The five images below I looked at in relation to the ice cave and also the ice cavern for it's ethereal and almost magical qualities; again something I want to capture.

Creating Custom Brushes in Photoshop

Here I was experimenting creating different brushes on Photoshop. I scanned in textures of ice and snowflakes and various other materials to see what effect they gave and how I could use them in my backgrounds. 

I began by opening up a picture in Photoshop; a picture of ice found online, shown here:

I then began erasing around the edges so that the brush wouldn’t resemble a square

 I then went to Edit > Define Brush settings

 And named my new brush appropriately.

This was the final result.

I did this with lots of other images and really liked the effect it gave.

 Here is what some of the brushes look like collaged together:

First Promotional Poster

Here is the first promotional poster for 'Iceman Omm' 

Background Development

Here I scanned in some pages from my sketchbook where I have some rough paintings of the various landscapes mentioned in my story.





Inside the Ice Cave

The Arctic Camp


and


The mountainous background.





I then imported them into Photoshop and edited them.

I added in the character and put in a little more detail.

Here I merged three pictures together to create a landscape.

Although I do like the painted quality and that's what I hope to replicate in my final piece, it's still not quite how I envisioned it to look so I will be developing it further.

Character Facial Expressions

Here are some facial expressions for each of the characters using ink in the simplified form mentioned previous. I liked the fact Cal when he smiles you can see his two front teeth are missing and when Omm is angry his eyebrows transform into a mono-brow.

Cal

Omm

Father

Simplifying the Character Design

As I mentioned in an earlier post I needed to make my original character designs more simpler so they could be translated into animation.
With this I decided to look at looking at simple shapes to create the characters and to give them simple facial details.

Here is a very quick and simple design of the three characters mentioned clockwise from the top left; Omm, Cal and Father. I like this, especially the design of the father, however, it's a little boring and lacks anything special in my opinion and is maybe too simple.

Here I tried using a different medium; ink calligraphy pen. I really like the brush quality this gives especially in the faces of Omm and Father. I am a little skeptical again at the simplicity and how it will work when it comes to animating it. 

This was using an altered brush on Photoshop to try and get the quality of a hand drawn image. I quite like this, especially the design of Omm, I like the contrast of the shapes of their faces; oval, circle and rectangle.