Final Storyboards...

Here are a few images of our final storyboard. These helps visualize the flow of story in more detail and also our desired camera angles for each shot.

 Final Storyboards (Partial)

We have a total of 23 shots/ scenes. Everyone seemed okay with the composed shots so we'll be following this layout throughout production. Although highly unlikely, minor changes may be applied later in production.

Schedule...

Now that Katie has a final design we're moving on to the modelling phase, which will be done by Marc Dagatan.

Image Plane References

I modified Katies model sheet to further help the modelling process in Maya by having Katie in a T-pose, ready to be used in the image planes. Side view has no arm simply because the front view already has enough information to model the arm. Made extra arm references for the top view for a better visualization of the hands and fingers.

These are a few thumbnails of the character design process.

Rough Thumbnails

These first lot are a bit crazy with different proportions, sizes and shapes. Got carried away with the experimenting here.

Refined Thumbnails

These thumbnails were just more refined to what we already knew we wanted in terms of body type and size. Nice, clear, consistent silhouettes all holding enough visual information to conceive various character concepts. I like thumbnail #11 for its simplicity.

Production Schedule

This is our Production Schedule to help us keep on track with the tasks at hand. The group has been all over the place lately because its the first time for many of us working on a production. Hopefully this will help us find a more structured process for this assessment.

Final Character Design...

I was put in charge of drawing up the final model sheet because the group felt that the previous bunny concept I'd drawn up was more or less what we wanted. So I began the long process of refining Katie's design.

Rough Construction

Here I re-evaluated her proportions from the previous bunny concept making her head more dominant than before. Her arms and legs shortened and slightly more chubby. Legs aren't as extremely bent and more slicked down to fit an anime-ish style.

Rough Sketch

I gave her a slightly more rounded face. Hair has been smoothed out more and not as detailed as the concept. Her arm sleeves have been rolled up as per previous suggestions.

Clean Up

Nice clean lines for a more tidy look, ready for colouring.

Grayscale

Grayscale helps with colouring by adding the foundation of tonal values. This way I don't have to shade and colour at the same time. All the shading and basic lighting is taken care of here.

Colour

Here are a few colour variations. The one good thing about anime is that characters can be very colourful. I personally like the dark colours on #4.

Final Turn Around

This is Katie's final look. No extreme change from the initial purple bunny pajamas concept but I guess its because everyone had already become attached to that design. It definitely works with our story and certainly feels like it fits Katie's personality. I reckon this design is 'not too generic' and 'not too unrecognizable' for the audience.

Hopefully it dodges all the modelling and rigging problems we're hoping to avoid.