Huelo and the Magic Paint
"Find your character from an outside source (a hidden world, an overlooked object, a person, alien, animal, etc)" was the task. I wanted something unique and something that would be personal to me but still relatable to others. I love painting, Hawaii and adventure. Coming up with my paint brush and magic paint seemed brilliant to me. (of course)
Once I discovered the paint brush idea, I started brainstorming but I had a specific style in my head from the beginning. He had to have the right hands and feet. Putting pencil to paper I went old school. I wanted to have fingers but I wanted him to be cartoony.
Voila Huelo was born. Of course that wasn't his name yet. Doing the Character Social Media Profile helped me get to know my character and learn his ways. Things I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. I had to research some Hawaiian words before finding appropriate names.
Meet Huelo Honua. (Whose name comes from the Hawaiian words for brush (Huelo) and world (dream world) (Honua)). I was planning on having his arms morph out from his body but it looked more appealing swinging back and forth as he walked.
Doing the turnaround sheet was a new experience for me. I haven't have any formal training for drawing, so drawing in such a structured way was enlightening. I researched online for many angle examples.
Meet Nui Koa (His name comes from the Hawaiian words for big (Nui) and warrior (Koa), he is Huelo's best friend and is a strong silent type. He is always bailing Huelo out of something. I chose to not give Nui the ability to bend in the middle of his body , it just didn't seem to work with this style of paint brush.
This scene of the old art studio is placed here in the process to demonstrate I didn't fully understand the progression of the process. I had to go back and fill in the back story so it would make sense to the audience. I had the full story written out with details in the story idea and scripting phase then later realize I need to show the words of the story through action. This scene provides a place for several shots while developing the story set up.
These original story boards start in shot 5, the arrival in to the land where the adventure begins. I added a little color to get an idea of how the characters needed to stand out against the vibrant Magic Paint colors.
During the process I would experience times of fun and times of frustration but once I got it down I really started feeling more adventurous to do more... but then I would have set backs and felt I bit off more than I could chew.
I had realized way too late that I had to create all this movement independently. I think I thought there was a magic wand tool the would miraculously make the characters do what I wanted them to do in my head. I ended up feeling the pressure and I cut some scenes out. Toward the end of the project I regained some confidence and ended up adding those cuts scenes back in.
Here you may notice that my story boards because less detailed as well. I was haunted by the words, " dont be too ambitious, I would rather have a short but good animation then a long one without details." Or something to that effect.
"Digitize your character." What the heck does that mean...uh ok yeah, sure, what ever you say. Eventually I understood and continued gleefully having learned yet another new element and going forward. I understood I had to create the color over lap for when the character would be moving body parts.
Project | Character Rigging - For some reason I understood this right away. It seemed logical to me and imagined a puppet in my head. Rigging, got it! Anchor points check! Yay!
Crafting my Character's World was daunting and fun at the same time
I had to create five additional scenes after I had gotten to the point of making my Animatic. After the Story Pitch Presentation I need to establish the back story I had written. Creating the mishap at the art studio was not bad but I needed a tie in to why they just appeared in this new town. How would the old location be ok with them being gone.
I added this newspaper scene to try to link the before and after the mishap to allow for their disappearance.
It was much more difficult timing the VO for the additional scene than it was when I made the animatic.
I started free handing and creating from scratch but then realized it was faster and more accurate to how I wanted it to look using reference material from the actual location in Hawaii. This is when I became very familiar with the pen tool. Additionally I was mindful to keep the colors I used consistent from scene to scene.
I wanted to make the rain move but there wasn't enough time to go back and fix color and design flaws and with my many frames I took the creative license to not have movement in this scene because it wasn't actively raining, it was rain water running of the roofs to imply a fresh new day.
This scene may look a little boring but I discovered some very interesting paint brush tools and I was able to experiment. The Hibiscus flowers were free hand. This is the scene were I added the most color/texture detail all be it subtle. I discovered this great tool called the freeform pen tool, who knew!
This was my favorite scene. I was able to easily use the different tools I had struggled with early on. I had downloaded different paint brushes for stone, rock, leaves, etc. I was really starting to see the scenes usage unfold. I could use it for multiple shots and I even flipped it horizontal in another shot to get a different street view.
Looking at this now I realized I could have used the previous environment and just scaled it up. I feel there was many places were I ended up doing more repeated work than I had to but I learned the hard way.
ANIMATICS are the key!
I was working on my refining details and I had to check my animatic for something so I lowered the opacity on the environment and turned on the animatic and this is what was showing. I was so impressed, not necessarily with me but with the process, I had to take a screen capture and present this here.
It seems it was a long journey to get here and now looking over the modules in Canvas after this point its over. I know what I need to know I just have to do it! My characters are walking and they are walking with their individual styles. The walk cycle are relatively simple but since the characters limbs are so different it creates individualism in their walks.
Once I found my rhythm and I realized I could use the same character rigging for almost all their movements. I just had to duplicate the composition, rename and get the character the do something else. I really enjoyed the animating process and got brave to try to make the characters do different things like tumbling and running away and jumping. Im a believer.
