When E4 finally decided to run another E-Stings contest after a couple of years off, I had to have a go. My skills are mostly in static, 2D illustration, but I'd been playing with Flash and Blender in recent months for a few clients and I thought it might be worth a try.
The plan was to emulate those old Marvel Comics animations from the 60s, complete with the limited animation. Characters slide into shot, maybe an arm is raised and lips move a little. It was considered animation and as far as I'm concerned it could be used effectively if the basic shots and designs were good enough. So 'Zark!' was born, and went from digital sketches and Blender models to vector figures and backgrounds, all put together in Flash and a soundtrack added in After Effects (totally new to me!).
E4 didn't go for it, but as a debut animation I'm happy with it. You can view it at the bottom of these process pics.
My initial sketch for the 'hero'' in his first shot. I don't know where the inspiration came from, other than the limited colour palette and my need to keep things simple.
And a faithful, cleaned up vector version of the same image. A few details were changed, but otherwise it's pretty faithful.
My sketch for the final shot, as the hero punches a hole in the robot's head. I hope that comes across in the actual animation...
And a work-in-progress shot from the final version, of the same section.
An aborted angle for the last shot. I felt it didn't have enough impact.
I don't profess to be a whizz in Blender. Functional would be my benchmark. Hence, this robot is fairly basic and lighting played a big part in making it look okay.
See? Lighting.
