Applied Animation: Environment Concpets

So a few weeks ago I sent over some environment sketches to Katy to encourage her to start thinking about environment design and begin focusing on those rather than giving all of her attention to the characters (we can't have characters without environments). However, this didn't have the desired effect and although I'd pushed her to start the environments Katy just never seemed to get around to doing them. This means that my sketches were the only experimenting we had done in terms of environment design and whilst I was okay with using similar environments to what I had done, I do feel that there was a huge lack of experimentation and that maybe they weren't explored as much as they could have been. On top of this, there's been no real experimentation with camera angles, meaning we will have to draw environments up as we go if we decide to change the camera angle.

Boar Environment Concept

Wolf Environment Concept

Wolf Environment Concept

I was really disappointed that Katy hadn't been able to do any sketches for the environments and I wasn't aware of why she hadn't gotten round to them either. Assuming because it was too big a work load, I asked if she needed help, which she turned down, so there wasn't much I could do other than keep trying to encourage her to keep going however, this doesn't seem to have any effect on her work flow. I decided to give her a deadline for the final environment designs use my sketches as reference if she needed them. 

Katy's Boar Environment Design

Katy's Wolf  Environment Design

Katy's Wolf Environment Design

Although Katy hadn't experimented with any environment sketches, I feel that we have environments we can work with, however, they are just neater sketches of what I had drawn. I pointed this out to Katy and said that we haven't done enough experimentation into the environments, however she didn't really respond and moved on to other aspects of the project. For now these environments will do as a base to conduct look tests and to use as the main environments.

Overall, I'm unhappy with the development on the design side of things simply because we have minimal environments to work with and the enthusiasm that was there for characters isn't there for environments. This has led to communication between us to fade, which is having a negative impact on work flow. We need to get back on track with our schedule and make more of an effort to keep in touch with each other about our work and to communicate what we are thinking better.