Applied Animation: Character Positions and Colour Pallet Mood Boards

Colour is going to play a very important role in our animation as it will help to make our animation feel more natural and realistic against our talking animals, so it is important that we use the right shades and tones of colour. Katy and I feel that by incorporating natural colour schemes it will link in with our message and help to drive that home to the viewer. We also wanted to gather some research into the positions of the animals to help us when we are animating. So Katy and I decided to create some mood boards to make it a little easier. I started with the colour pallets of the characters and found that each character has a very similar tone in terms of fur/ feather colour. Although there are slight differences, I have a feeling that they may be slightly harder to see against the environments if we stick to the neutral brown tones of these animals and this is something that Katy and I will have to discuss. However, I went ahead and tried to find animals that had slightly different colours (e.g lighter or darker fur), as I think it will make the characters more appealing if they have unique and unusual colours.

Boar Colour Pallet

Wolf Colour Pallet

Robin Colour Pallet and Positions

Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of character design, I actually enjoyed researching colour pallets for our characters, as I have a huge interest in colour within animation and I am fully invested in choosing the right colour themes within our animation. After researching all of the animals, it's become clear that we will need to experiment and explore a very neutral colour scheme with only small splashes of colour. Having said this however, I do feel that there is plenty of room to incorporate blends of colour in the fur of the boar and the wolf. Particularly in the wolf, I have found that they have a very distinctive pattern around the eyes, similar to the distinctive red breast on the robin, which would help to make our character very appealing. I definitely want Katy and I to explore using these patterns and colours to find the right style for us to use in our animation. 

Boar Positioning 

Wolf Positioning One

Wolf Positioning 

I then looked at the perspective and position of our characters, as this is something that will also be really important. If the characters don't fit into the environment properly, I don't think that the animation would work as well because it would be distracting to look at. Not only this, but I also want to improve upon my perspective, and I feel that this is a great time to do so. When looking at the references I wanted to collect images that would not only help with perspective but also get the ball rolling on shot framing and depth of field. I was looking for images that made the characters the focus of the frame through positioning and how much environment was focused on around the animal. As you can see I found this task a lot easier with the wolf than I did the boar, as the position we've chosen for the wolf is very common among wolf photographs. Despite this though, I feel that I managed to gather enough information that will help to inform both characters and how we should approach shot framing in our animation. I also managed to find a few images that may help us deal with the problem of texturing the boar. It may be worth considering putting in a slight pattern for the boars texture to try and suggest the coarseness of its fur. 

I also decided not to do a separate board for the robin, as it will be standing throughout the whole animation, so I incorporated the positioning into the colour pallet board. 

Overall, I believe that we have a enough visual information to start conducting material and colour tests and I'm actually feeling pretty excited about getting started.