Exploring Character

Hey guys,

When we were talking about character last night, that reminded me that I have some documents that I use for thinking about character that I wanted to share. I hope they are useful to you!

The first two are notes I took from a book called "Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities that Keep Readers Captivated" by Nancy Kress.

Documents about Character

1. Doc: Going from Concept to Character to Plot. One page of notes on how to start with an image/setting/concept, get a character from that, and then get the plot from the character. Notes from Kress' books.

2. Doc: Character Dossier. Like you guys were describing that the program gives you, this is a questionnaire from the book of things you can ask about your character. Directly from Kress' book.

3. Doc: Character Attributes. A list of different personality traits I complied from wikipedia and other sources.

Animation posing with Posemaniacs

Hey  everyone! I thought it would nice to share this app/link called Posemaniacs.
http://museumsketches.tumblr.com/

The site is really cool and gives you quick references for the human form when you're in a pinch.

Automatically Arrange Images in a Grid in InDesign

I didn't think I would be making another post today, but I just learned something MIND-BLOWING.

In InDesign, if you do Place using a number of images, then hold option-shift, you can automatically place those images in a grid. You can even use the arrow keys to decide how many rows/columns you want! I found out about it from here. 

It's PERFECT for storyboards. I worked on boards today and instead of taking 30 minutes to arrange them on a page it took less than a minute. I'm in love. Here are the boards. Hopefully I'll have more boards to show on Thursday.

"En Passant" Color Script 6 breakdown

You guys asked me about this piece I did as a color script for a short film project I helped out with:

I put the PSD file on my server so you can download it here: http://www.larkinheather.com/group/color-script6.psd

I started with a still from the short film animatic. It's a 3D animated film. 

Then I did a rough sketch over the screenshot, adding in missing elements

Refined the sketch.

Added base colors.

I used a palette and only took colors or mixed colors from that palatte.

I used a multiply layer and pale, purplish color for the first shadows. I chose purple because the light coming from the lamps and such would be a yellowish color. Yellow light technically means the shadows are yellow tinted, but I made the shadows purple because the contrast of the opposite colors is appealing. 

Added yellow paint on an overlay layer for the lights. 

Added a little more yellow on an overlay layer for light coming from the ceiling. 

Added dark brown on a multiply layer for very dark cast shadow areas.

Added a pale bluish multiply layer to generally make things darker. I imagine some blueish moonlight getting in there from a window up high.

Added a semi-transparent sheen of red on an overlay layer. Wanted to make the whole thing a little warmer.

Added more of the purple to a multiply layer to further darken the scene surrounding the main characters.

Painted on a bunch of yellows, blues, whites, purples on an overlay layer to add a little more variety in the lighting colors. 

Added dark, saturated blue to areas for more shadows. I chose blue because of moonlight again.

Added highlights using small ares of whitish/yellowish color and an overlay layer

Finally, a light sheen of blue on an overlay to cool down the center of the image, to push it back and bring the characters forward. 

Frenden Brushes

I recently discovered these Photoshop brushes and they are fucking awesome:

http://frenden.myshopify.com/products/photoshop_pencil_and_inking_brushes