Dream Hopper animation

A Record of the creations process of Dream Hopper by FluffyPhila (Tessa), a majority of the work shown will be by Myself

A Group assignment with classmates Chen and Kristen

For this we have chosen to create a roughly 40 second animation. My roles will be concept design, character design & illustration, background design & Illustration and the video compositing and editing.

Character animation and storyboarding/animatic will all be done by Chen and Kritsten.

Music wil be composed by Kathleen from the music department

https://www.instagram.com/kathsamess/

Links to their work will all be put in all posts of their work :)

The animation will be about Diana a magical sheep girl who travels every night and puts everyone to sleep by spreading magic dust over the earth. One time when she was travelling of her giant rabbit Marshmallow she knocks Cheesar the dormouse who was sleeping off of his cloud. Racing down she and Marshmallow catch him as he falls. They travel to his home and return him to a castle in the sky.

Initial brainstorming phase, the idea chosen was the sheep girl with the rabbit and mouse. It was created by picking elements with common themes from everyones ideas to cretae a selection of 3 characters and an setting.

concept art by the amazing Kristen and Chen. First drawing is by Kristen and 2nd is by Chen. The door mouse in the sky was taken from the first illustration and the idea of a girl who rides a giant rabbit through the sky was taken from the 2nd illustration.

Kritens work:

https://www.instagram.com/featherrfly/

Chens work: 

https://www.instagram.com/skyrosarts/

The Initial character design for the girl at this stage she wasn't named and the design was created with the priority of ease of animation. skirt details and accessories were kept to the minimum as i was concerned about keeping the animation as simple and easy as possible. After discussion with my team mates though it was decided that it didn't fit the intended aesthetic that we were aiming for. My group encouraged and reassured me to go with a more complex design :)

The initial background concept work. Multiple variations were tried out for different colour palettes. used the mountain which will be the opening scene and the scene introducing us to the castle  to work off of. Castle was heavily inspired by germanic architecture and photobashed together.

the first rough draft of Dianas design with an emtremely rough background for approval from the team to create the complete character design

a colour test with a rough of Dianas new design and the dormouse

a background illustration to test out the style and colour palette. Will need to be revised before the final piece. The grasses and leaves will be animated frame by frame whilst the clouds will be animated in after effects during compositing.

first proper illustration of Dianas new design to dicuss designs details. decided to try transparent fabric for the frills for a softer dreamier effect. The frills linework were going to be too complicated to animate and so in the new design they were simplified. 

Dianas final design, the outfit was based  off of a victorian night gown for a more gentle and sleepy appearance. Her colour palette was changes to a blue design so the backgound could be more purple based.

character reference sheets for Cheesar the dormouse and Masrhmallow the rabbit

just working on the backgrounds now. some changes have been made to simplify the background for the sake of time constraints

some more cloud backgrounds

The Final animation! Through the compositing stage i was adding additional animations over the character animations, background animations and effects.

And our progress reel from story board, to line animated, to final piece.