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Major Project Plans

  • penspeare
  • May 7, 2024
  • 16 min read

(This blog post is part of a group for my Major Project assignment as part of my Masters in Animation. This is the general Major Project post, and the first one. Links to the other relevant blogs are under "Brother Blogs" under Navigation).

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Table of Contents


Brother Blogs

Take me to the Style Guide blog

Take me to the Visual Development blog

Take me to the Industry Facing blog


Thought Process for Major Project Ideas

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I wanted to jot down some ideas I have floating around my head for my final module. I've been itching to get them out, whether or not I'll go through with them or if they'll develop into something new, I want to make sure I have some sort of foundation or basis.


Most of these I didn't take forward, but I left the list in for reference and demonstrating my thought process.

I took forward developing the pitch bible (highlighted), but then it turned into creating a style guide instead, which got a lot more focus. That said, there was a huge overlap, so I've left in the prep work for it as it still has a major effect on the style guide.

Brainstorming Ideas

  • Polishing up all my previous assignment submissions so they are showreel ready

  • Completing and polishing up some of the little side projects I was doing when I had a little more time for them

  • Develop my pitch bible, as I want to take it further

  • Considering making a "proof of concept" based on my pitch bible

  • Rather than making an actual pilot (I would need an entire team of people to help me with that and a lot more time, regardless of where my skillset is!), the proof of concept would be a very short animated piece. Assuming you have the context for what the pitch bible is about, the proof of concept would potentially be a "found footage" style piece as they film one of their rituals as an assignment for one of their college classes.

  • If I were to want to take my pitch bible even further beyond the course, I would want to make a few of these to build hype for the series

  • Depending on what way my major project assignment works or is carried out, I could potentially just plan this to a T and have a really detailed animatic for it, and along with it have very, very detailed planning on how it should look an what I would like it to look like. Or even along with a rundown of a series of these shorts.

  • I'm not entirely sure what they're called, but I definitely remember watching a lot of shorts of this description from other animated shows when I was growing up. They wouldn't be considered canon and they'd run on either end of the commercial breaks


Consider the current "gothic revival" for your pitch bible and concept book as this works well in your favour, especially for current trends.



Schedule and Journal

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I have some "To Do" lists and started off with a very general schedule, as I also need to work about 30 hours at a survival job, which are also in the relative sections throughout the blogs, but I've tried to keep them concise.


  • Discuss the more refined goal of your major project, as it also links directly into the Industry Standards assignment as an art director or concept designer Link the Industry Standards blog in here

  • The style guide, and researching the role of an art director to link in with it, is the main goal of this, although coming back to the pitch bible


Other things I need to do:

Style Guide: The layout emulates a grimoire; "annotated" with student notes

Draw out thumbnails on how you want it laid out

Look at existing grimoires for inspiration (already done some of this, so make sure to add it in as research evidence)

Have watched some videos on branding guides, so make sure to evidence this in your blog and discuss the transferable advice and how it's helpful

 

Pipeline: I'm very bad at this, but trying to be as mindful about it as possible; have a diary on what I've been doing; need to update it though. Have a better idea/direction on what I'm doing and how long it takes, so able to do a better To Do list. But look at some Gantt charts


Industry Facing: Have blog started, but need to sit down and properly think about own branding and consider CV, etc.


Review of Industry Facing Materials midway through the semester!


Refer back to marking rubric and marking criteria to make sure you're ticking the boxes too


To Do Lists and "Diary" Entries


I thought I'd move these into one section for housekeeping and to keep the rest of the blog tidied up. Some are more general To Do lists, and others are dated to take note of what I did, or what I would like to have done by a certain date.


  • Finish Aoife [ X ]

  • Draw up 4 different poses [ X ]

  • Develop The Devil [ X ]

  • Develop The Virtuoso Demon [ <abandoned> ]

  • Finish pitch bible [ <priority shifted> ]

  • The backgrounds are really bothering me in the pitch bible

  • Going to Ikea to take photos [ X ]

  • Go to a graveyard and get some photos [ <priority shifted> ]

  • Consider splitting blog into three (maybe including the industry facing one) separate blogs so it doesn't get super long and/or super cluttered but, obviously, clearly link between for easier navigation [ X ]

  • Add in stuff you forgot to or didn't get to finish from the previous module [ / ]

  • Art Direction - your specialist area [ X ]

  • Learn how to use brushes and make your own etc. in Photoshop [ ~ ]

  • Split this up into more bite sized, manageable tasks [ ~ ]

  • THIS IS GOOD because it demonstrates a learning outcome for the roles you want to pursue and becoming more involved and up to date with software that you need to get familiar with, etc.

  • Work on your pipeline [ / ]

  • Strategy for self-promotion (assignment 2) [ / ]

  • Tuesday 9th January 2024 at 5pm

    • 3rd week in May 2024 (received extension due to family bereavement midway through module)



Monday 4th September 2023

  • did some "location" scouting. Went to Ikea and took photos of some of the set ups to use as references for the interiors or interactive objects, particularly The Devil's room.


New Brief for Pitch Bible

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So, in order to curate a new brief, I'll need to look at the old one for a quick compare and contrast, and up against the feedback given from last semester. It'll be getting some amendments, but I'll need to stick to the new brief. [what was that sentence]



Tutorial with Sarah (01/08/2023)





  • A matter of writing up your own "brief" for completing the pitch bible

  • Reflect on the feedback given from last semester

  • Polish up what you already have

  • Show it to people and get their feedback, generally "would you watch this"

  • Work out a rough schedule based on what you'd like to have completed, your job, and class time

Rough Schedule



The first couple of weeks will be quite experimental and as-I-go schedule-wise to get an idea of what I'm able to do. I think I'll try to get some pitch bible work done on the Tuesday, then open up some old animation exercises on the Wednesday afternoon and give myself an idea of how things will go.





Feedback for Pitch Bible from Last Semester


  • General: Complete characters to the same level so it's clear what the style is; especially on the cover.

  • Cover: Add title to cover. Poses and characters are strong though. Something cheesy for title would be fun

  • Pages 2-3: Target age range of audience in next page. Nicely justified, but make font smaller and split into more paragraphs for better readability; it's okay if it spills into another page or two; add more doodles/objects to those pages as they're quite fun

  • Concept of how the pages are laid out in an interesting way; be mindful of how the text interacts with the background drawings. Some of the sketchy style comes off as quite '90s music video, so maybe look into some of those as further research but, again, try to clarify the style when you polish it all up -though I think a lot of it was mainly placeholders anyway, so they'll be finished. Definitely look into collage-like backgrounds though, as Courage the Cowardly Dog employed this style with a mixed-media approach, so look into that - that helps characters stand out from background too

  • Try to find a way to lay it out in a more consistent page orientation

  • One page per episode (issue due to time constraint, but either way), example: paraphrasing "episode 2 page could be society members handing out stickers or flyers, merch, etc.";

  • Figure out the final style - but there is a punky style with the unfinished bible, so I might play around with that (hooray for happy accidents!)

  • Strong character designs, show these in one big concept image to demonstrate the final style, and sell it across, capturing the essence of the series



Always going to be tweaking this where necessary, but it's handy to have a visual of a week-by-week schedule so I can try to ground myself and work out what needs to be done. It also gives me a more realistic idea of what can and cannot be done given the time.



Consider expanding on the episodes - for the first few, a page each, then one page for a short synopsis or logline each. E.g. maybe keep the "bulletin board" for the short synopses or loglines;

Mentioned later in the blogs, the general visual development of characters became the primary focus and creation of the Style Guide. Expand on the characters - one-two pages for the protagonists, one for the deutagonist(s), then one page for the more minor characters


Further Research

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Looking into the trend of a "gothic revival" Sarah mentioned, so I wanted to look at some old "goth" cartoons, as well as more recent releases, regardless of format (i.e. animated, live action, mix, etc. as it is all very, very helpful). When I initially googled it though, I got bombarded with gothic architecture.

I'm noticing a trend of varying shades or purples and reds, especially on top of dark, often painterly backgrounds...my favourites!

"Gothic Revival" live action series (and some older), and gothic or darkly inclined cartoons from the '80s to early 2000s.



  • What about your colour schemes?

  • And why?


Applying the mixed-media approach employed by Courage the Cowardly Dog in its style and how well it all tied together in a very spooky, experimental animated series for its time (1999-2002, dir. John R. Dilworth, who holds a fine art degree).


This was a happy accident. I ran out of time finishing my pitch bible for its initial deadline for the assignment it was originally made for, so it was full of a lot of sketchy drawings and photographic placeholders giving it a collage look.

After taking the feedback into account, it was something that was of interest as it gave it a bit of a punky aesthetic, albeit difficult to tell what the exact style was trying to be. I figured, why not look into that more, so I put together a thought board of Courage the Cowardly Dog screencaps and title cards. This show is absolutely an influence of mine, so I want to delve into it a little deeper.


First Hand Research


What do you plan to do?

  • Location scouting

  • What locations are there?

  • Graveyard

  • Classroom

  • Spare room/residential

  • Library, probably

  • College/university corridor

  • Taking photos of textures

  • Experimentation of different media

  • Contacting industry professionals who employ the same techniques

  • Who do you already know? Have you mutual contacts?

  • John R. Dilworth - dir. of Courage the Cowardly Dog

  • Kaden - Twitter mutual who works in the industry as a board artist and showrunner

  • George Abbington - showrunner for Peach Creek

  • Sketch up some thumbnails of scene snippets or character interactions - Henry suggested creating concepts which will then make it easier to work out what needs to be done from a stylistic perspective because you'll then know what you need

  • Just had one possible idea for the background: I like making model sets, and was thinking that if I take enough care into them, they could be used as the actual background. Photos taken of different angles of the rooms or the sets that could be incorporated in the final shots; they could be digitally painted over to add to them as well. It's just an idea at the moment and something worth experimenting with

Week 2 Tutorial and Feedback (with Sarah)

Planning out some of the pages I need to add or may have missed due to time constraints based on the feedback

Work out new brief


Using desktop Celtx's production management feature (I just like using it and keeping everything together) to play around with the schedule


In fact, I'm going to take it page by page here, and pick it apart to better work out what needs to be added.


Bible Breakdown

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[Quick intro for this section]





Week 3 Tutorial and Feedback (with Henry)

Priority: provide methodology on how to achieve with stylistic choices

Check marking rubric to keep yourself right

Henry mentioned going over exactly how to achieve the style of the finished piece in the style guide.



Establishing an Art Style

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This section goes hand-in-hand with the Visual Development blog. I'm leaving it here as Wix makes it very, very tricky to cut/copy and paste within and across blogs when it includes a multitude of images between text.


  • Cross-reference style choice based research that uses mixed-media, and the general style you wish to go for.







  • Including features such as expression sheets, the characters could be taking selfies

  • I should probably take a look at some of my old illustrations and work out what I like about them, and what I can include in the pitch bible

The author of the article actually discusses the inclusion of those aspects as well:


Looking at mixed-media


  • Include some of your own illustrations to communicate what you want to achieve, or develop and expand on. Create a collation of your work [ X ]



I want the art style of this to emulate my own traditional art style; I like the cleaner, marker-coloured characters (or anything that's being interacted with or moving), with a chalk pastel background. It gives it a little eerie, murky feel to it that I like, while the characters are a bit more vibrant and "in focus" then, to what we should be looking at.

 To achieve this style, I'll need to work out how to emulate it digitally. Nothing wrong with the concepts being traditional, particularly for the actual pitch bible and concepts, but the style guide will need to describe how this should be done.




I enjoy illustration with a particular interest in character and figure studies I often employ a mixed-media approach to this as well, so I suppose it makes a lot of sense that I apply it to my pitch bible, and that it has now developed into a style guide.

I put together a collation (above) of some of my favourite illustrations and character pieces to deconstruct some of the more prominent stylistic choices, and why I employ them, and what works, and what I'd like to develop further, and how I'd apply it to an animated series.


I didn't get to explore the mixed media aesthetic anywhere near as much as I wanted to; I was wanting to get the overall character designs, and design of the documents, as the main focal point, but I will keep these here if just to show my thought process or intentions, as it still influenced the direction I was going in, or what I decided to research regarding what is already out there; I think these fit well with the "gothic revival", and I have looked at that a bit more in the Industry Facing blog when looking at similar production or production companies I wanted to look further into.



What do you need to include that will demonstrate an established style?

This will also tie in with your industry facing materials; having an established style will be a huge part of your brand and how people will see something of yours and say, "that belongs to Penspeare"



The author of this blog post discusses the importance of going out into the real world to obtain first hand photographic references, which is something I intend on doing.




What is a medium in art Available at: https://ourpastimes.com/what-is-a-medium-in-art-12180838.html [Accessed: 08/08/2023]



Design Development

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I'm going to link directly to the Visual Development and Style Guide blogs for this section, so as to keep this blog more oriented towards the planning and general thought process of the module.



15/08/2023

  • Punk rock/art history books for references or guides - go to Waterstone's

  • Jamie Reid

"Reid's work often featured letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, particularly in the UK; he created the ransom-note style while he was designing for Suburban Press, a radical political magazine he founded in 1970. His best known works include the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and the singles "Anarchy in the U.K.", "God Save the Queen" (based on a Cecil Beaton photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, with an added safety pin through her nose and swastikas in her eyes, described by Sean O'Hagan of The Observer as "the single most iconic image of the punk era"), "Pretty Vacant" and "Holidays in the Sun". The image from "God Save the Queen" was named "the greatest record cover of all time" by Q magazine in 2011, and later became part of the collection in the National Portrait Gallery."






Scene snippet thumbnails. The Devil doesn't like horror movies

I want to try to get some of these thumbnails cranked out as it helps me figure out the sort of scenes that need to be done, and what backgrounds will be needed, and that helps, in turn, to figure out the look and tone of these scenarios.

I like that above scene as it demonstrates, even just a little bit, the personalities of Aoife and The Devil. Thwarted expectations of The Devil (him being scared of horror films) also demonstrates the more comedic aspect of the show. For these reasons, I'll include them in the Style Guide document.




So, now that this has developed into a style guide, or style bible, in regards to the "graffiti" illustrations, I'm thinking of making the actual style guide bits... how do I word this, part of the world in the bible itself. That is to say, the pitch bible was supposed to look like it could technically be an episode, so the information on the series itself was incorporated in such a way that it keeps it immersive, so I want to carry that over into the actual style guide. For example, if I'm having character turn arounds, a character could be standing in a locker room with surrounding mirrors, or for character expressions, we could have a page with one of those photo booths with silly faces, or flicking through a character's phone and we can see their various selfie attempts. I like this approach because it just makes it more fun to look through.

But anyway, I think it would be fun to do something similar with the more technical aspects, so the characters may have desecrated or annotated their "text books" (i.e. the series synopsis, or how episode loglines are presented) with "lecture notes" on, for example, how to draw the characters, their colour schemes, etc.


Fixing up Pitch Bible

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The priority for polishing up the pitch bible itself shifted so, eventually, focus moved primarily onto the Style Guide, however, most if not all of what was being worked towards for the pitch bible was used for the style guide. They are very intertwined with one another but, as I said, priority and focus shifted to the style guide for this project.


I left in some of the prep work/research and progress for the pitch bible to demonstrate the thought process and original intentions for it; they were also still very helpful for development of other documents such as the style guide.


Here is the blog post for the original Pitch Bible from the previous semester.


Playing around with this page so I can fit as much information in as possible




I think it was at this point I decided it would be more beneficial to rename this blog "Visual Development" from specifically the pitch bible, and focus was shifted from developing the pitch bible to developing specific aspects of the show such as a small number of the characters, otherwise it really could go on and on and on.

Anyway, instead of developing and refining the pitch bible, I created the Style Guide that showcased the style and how said characters should be drawn, and notes on how to animate them. I fully intend on further developing it even beyond the marking period, but the next section of this blog will go over the planning of the style guide; the blog on the Style Guide itself will go into more detail on that, and there will be some overlap with this blog as well as the visual development in general goes hand-in-hand with it.


Style Guide Planning

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(Take me to the Style Guide blog)


The link at the bottom of this section by YouTuber "Yes I'm a Designer" goes over how to create a style guide. Although it's specifically garnered towards actual brands and how to carry it across, there is a lot of overlap and is still incredibly helpful.


  1. Needs a table of contents

  2. Dos as well as Don'ts

  3. I mentioned somewhere about drawing characters' hair/hats being in a gyroscopic view - add this, but also add where it talks about this from Illusion of Life in the blog post for research

  4. Consider how the style guide will be laid out, and what differentiates the style guide from the actual pitch bible


Conclusion

This is more of a general reflection on the Major Project module as a whole.

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The final outcome for this project is a PDF document of the style guide, and is linked in the submissions page of Blackboard, alongside links to the relative blog posts, including this one.


I think because of my extension, it messed a bit with my schedules; I had a family bereavement right in the middle of the module, so it definitely affected a lot of the tasks that I had originally intended to do, and had a ripple effect on work, as in my "survival" job, or "muggle job" as I call it sometimes - but I can't afford to leave it while on the course so, as is evidenced in the schedule section, I had to balance between that and university work and other life things - which is very hard to do, as it turs out! But I tried to work around it as best as I could.


My final outcome, as well as the Industry Facing Materials assignment which is 20% of the overall Major Project module, is a PDF document of the Style Guide.


There was a huge overlap between the Industry Facing documents and the specialised subject aspect, let alone the blog posts; I tried to keep them as specific as possible, but there were some repetitions. Everything is there, and I tried to link between them where it became relevant or mentioned.



References

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