Hey!

Here’s an update on the animated Ipad book which goes by the title of Apollo, which is ticking along nicely in the chinks between day jobs and babies and things. I’m enjoying myself immensely. I may as well, cos it’s going to get gruelling and soul destroying shortly.

Got the color script sorted: (This is a chunk of it)

And have landed on an approach to the background paintings. I was playing with going all digital and painting them all in Photoshop which is fast and gives me more graphic results. But I love grungy paint too much. So I start off the paintings in acrylic monochrome, like this: The messier the better. I can play with it all in photoshop later.

Next, still in monchrome, tighten it all up a bit in photoshop.

Time to start slapping some color around, using multiply layers in PS. Kind of like adding watercolor washes over the top. This will darken things, so I’ll need to pull out the light spots and  contrast after. Looks horrible right now, but stay calm.

Next, using what we’ve got so far as a guide, painting with more opaque color on top, taking out excessive texture, tightening contrasting areas. Also adding a bit of foreground leaves. They are on a separate layer- I want to animate them later.

Next, give it more zing and lighting by painting in overlay layers on top,and  deeping the shadows with more multiply. This all aims to keep the original paintstrokes visible as much as possible. Done! It looks a bit empty. But then, it’s a background, and that’s ok.

Along with that, the animation is progressing. It’s a a steep curve for me, I only ever did stop frame, and not too much of that, before I began to board and then direct. So it’s great to try and finally wrap my head around this stuff. Long way to go. Here’s a shot break down:

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2012 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave your thoughts, or trackback from your own site.