21st January to the 25th January

Aims
Finish drawing up Holland and plan out Paris as I can’t put it off forever. I want to be ready to draw out Paris as soon as I’ve finished with Holland so that I keep the ball rolling. Mike has suggested this week that we go down to the library to see if there are any print books we can use in the environments so we must go down and check.

Goal’s Reached
Holland is going pretty well and I have all the drawings done so it’s now all planned out. I really need to decide how to colour it because I will have to get a new sketch pad of brown paper if I want to do it the same way as the test I did. I did go to the shop i bought it from but they don't sell them same thing in a bigger size. I thought about scanning a page of the book and stretching it but i think that will make it fuzzy.
Luckily the store at Ravensbourne had some big sheets of similar paper so i've bought some of those.
I’m really enjoying doing these environments, probably because it means I can avoid the computer. I don’t hate the computer…wait, yes I do. I certainly don’t love it.
The best discovery this week has definitely been Mucha the poster artist who has now breathed new life into Paris. Here is a horrible test in Photoshop of Paris. Having spent an evening trying to re-work the style I’ve been drawing Paris in and trying to incorporate the Café de Beignet into the scene I finally had a paddy and gave up. BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE!!!!!!
Andrew and I found lots of books that gave us lots of inspiration for the journey scenes I was particularly excited about Mucha (obviously) and a pattern book with a lovely Coy carp in it which I would like to draw into China. I KNOW it’s a Japanese symbol but I just can’t pass this opportunity up. I think it’ll look really good as a star constellation over the Great Wall of China. Do not question my logic, I will make this work.

14th January to the 18th January

Aims
Complete the boat and France’s scene.

Goal’s reached?

I’ve managed to finish the boat scene and I’ve made alpha channels of all the layers. When showing Dave he insisted that the whole scene would be much easier to do in after effects and part of me is starting to agree. I ran some tests in Maya and they look a little rubbish so I’ll have to spruce them up a little. If I do want to make the scenes in Maya I worried for a while about shadows as the alpha channels wouldn’t cast them if rendered normally (another reason to do it in After Effects) so I researched a bit and have discovered that if I turn on Ray tracing then the alpha’s will cast shadows so that’s that little problem out the way.
As for France. I’m having problems with Paris so instead of mope around about it I decided to swap it for Holland, as I know exactly what I want to do with Holland and have a good understanding of how I need to set out the layers as I did my little test.

Des said he’d make our motor bike for the stamp collector to ride on and he's really good with vehicles so I must draw it this weekend and give it to him. Hopefully I can get him to texture it too.
The picture above is an original test i did for the boat scene as if i were to colour everything in a similar style to the Dutch scene.

I would like to explain exactly how i plan to do these scenes.
We have 5 locations

The Channel
Paris/France
Nederlands
Egypt
China

Within each of these stamps the environment will be made up of several layers. Forground mid ground and background. Each of these layers will move independently and i will render an animation of George on his motorbike that i will composite into each stamp as he journeys through chasing the stamp that will also be animated in Maya then composited into After Effects.
I'm hoping that i will be able to incorporate this into each stamp but some may not be possible.

7th January to 12th January

Aims

Here begins a new term. Time to re-write a new timetable and get down to business.Heres the timetable i think you can just about see it. If we stick to this everything should get done in time. It will be hard to stick to this this term because of dissertation but i've made strict rules for Andrew and i to do an hour a night and that should get us through fine.

This week, following my sudden brain wave having looked at the Zelda phantom Hourglass artwork booklet I’ve given myself a week to look into the journey background textures. I’ve set Andrew off on modelling the environments and I know that’s going to take him a while as he’s got 3 to do and they’re not really that simple.
There are 5 environments that I need to plan but I want them all to be 2D on planes so it’s not like I’ll be modelling complex environments. The idea is to make these LOOK nice.

Goals reached
I’ve looked in to the journey designs and am doing a lot of research. It’s going to be far too hard to make them all look like authentic 1930 stamps as these were all made in cross hatch and I think the whole thing is going to look pretty boring if we model the whole thing like that. Therefore I have devised an awesome plan. This plan being to make the stamps look like the work of artists.
I made a miniature test of Holland and I think it came out quite nicely although when I showed it to Mike I don’t think he agreed although Dave thought it looked pretty good. The problem with this style for Holland though is that it absolutely must be done on brown paper, putting it on white paper will look really naff.
When trying the boat scene in a similar style I realised that I couldn’t use this for everything the search had to go on for other styles that fitted each location specifically.
I have started the boat scene as I think this should be done in the cross hatch style I want there to be at least one scene that does use the traditional 1930 style. I don’t like cross hatching so you’ll have to wish me luck as this will go on for a while.

31st December to 4th January

Aims
Redesign George’s room so that it looks more like it’s from the 1930’s and accept that everything is not following the schedule. I also want to take another look at Lani and George’s colour pallets so that when it comes to texturing I know exactly what I’m doing, or if I have to pass the textures on other people know exactly how I want the character to look.

Goals Reached
Bits and pieces have been completed, I don’t know why I’m struggling so much to try and reach these simple goals. I’ve tried colouring George differently but I just can’t seem to shake the original design. Blue really seems to suit him. It’s not too drab but at the same time it doesn’t really stand out either and that’s exactly the look I’m going for. Just to refresh my Photoshop skills (or lack thereof) I’ve started to paint my favourite picture of Lani and George. I was really struggling for a while as I tried to use layers but just ended up getting frustrated as they overlapped and changed each other’s colourings so I tried merging the layers and found it much easier. I’m trying my hand at blending darker and lighter tones to give the effect of shadows and the picture has a rather rough sketchy feel to it but I like that.
Unfortunately while updating the picture during the week I have managed to delete Lani from the picture. I am NOT happy. I have an older save but not the most recent the one you see here is the older version. I’m really angry I hate it when Photoshop asks you if you want to save changes despite the fact that you already saved. I briefly got confused for a moment with another image that needed its changes saved and bam! There goes a lot of hard work. I’m so annoyed with myself.
I’ve sketched new furniture for George’s room and tried to theme it all as you can see from the legs of chairs and tables. I thought this was nice as it ties everything in together. The idea actually came from my Grandmother’s flat as mom is still clearing it out and I happened to notice the feet of a writing desk that I sadly do not have a picture of.