After developing an idea, the next step was planning how I was getting started on working on the project. I started officially planning this on Nov 1, 2021.
I opened a new spreadsheet using Google spreadsheets and planned all the steps that I would have to do until completion. I made a calendar and wrote on the days where I decided to do a task. I learned this from the workshop I participated in called 'How to develop a short film'. Below you will see a screenshot of my spreadsheet that I used.
I managed to follow along with what I planned for the first two weeks but, things got busy for me with my current job(s) so I only used this spreadsheet as a guide for the remainder of the month.
After planning the spreadsheet, I did some research for concepts. It's always good to have references so you can gather ideas for your final piece. I always liked the art style of Charlie Brown. Not only is it simple (to a degree), but it gives off just the right amount of information for storytelling and emotion. I also used many other references with similar styles to help with my development of my own characters.
(Note: Art displayed here was found on Pinterest and Instagram. Credit goes to the original artists.)
Then, I started doing some sketching of the male character in my sketchbook. I followed the typical design of young characters. I wanted him to have a big head and tiny body like in the examples above. By this time, I knew I was going for a 2D animated look. There was no way I had enough time to model, rig, weight paint, and animate both characters in time for Christmas. No way! So 2D it is.
My first sketches are a bit eh, but its a sketch so I wasn't too worried. The most important thing was that I was forming a face and making decisions about what I like and don't like. I've been doing a lot of studies of character design recently due to my teaching job. We studied shape language and how shapes can alter how you view characters in movies, tv shows etc.
Another attribute I wanted to add was a hairstyle that was more current with the trends. I literally typed little black boy on Google and found some hairstyles that were cool and I tried to draw them. I also kept in mind that I will be animating him so I didn't want something overly complicated. My time to do the entire project was very limited.
I finally settled on this picture below. I thought it was cute and I even used his ears as part of my design for both the characters in the end. Once I got a finalized look for the male character, I took the same attributes and used them for the female character as well. Since they are brother and sister, it made sense to me to give them both the same ears, nose, and thick eyebrows. It was my own preference.
This is the result. I thought they were cute and that was about it. The whole process took me about an hour in my sketchbook but I'm happy with what I came up with.
After deciding on the character designs, I started with some storyboards. I wrote a script and began thumbnailing the whole story that I had in mind at the time. During this process, the story changed at least 4 times before coming up with the final version. These other stories had so much potential but I had to backtrack and remind myself that it's just me, myself, and I working on this project. It made no sense trying to start something and not being able to finish it because the scope was too much. So with that being said, the story was reduced to a simple 10-12 second animation clip.
I planned to do an animatic but scratched that off my to-do list because it didn't seem necessary. I had simplified my story A LOT. I knew I had the ability to continue without an animatic and therefore, cleared up space in my schedule. I began making props for layout. Initially, I wanted to make the Christmas tree and the stool 3D. I had a completely different picture in my head. I thought that I could make it work with a mix of 2D and 3D. That plan failed. It became a full 2D animation.
I did the tree and stool in Blender and then exported the file in Krita. Krita was where I had decided to animate the characters. I was thinking of using Blender's Grease pencil but I barely had any experience with it. I was worried it would take me more time to learn about the software than using it as an animation tool. I had more experience using Krita than Grease pencil. The decision was not hard. I went with what I knew and what I was comfortable with.
When I drew both characters in Krita and put the props together, I didn't like how it looked. So, I drew the props in Krita in the end.
Lots of decision making during this process but it all worked out in the end. Next blog will be about animation! Stay tuned!
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