A Peek at a Scene from The Pick-Up Princess

Production still moves steadily forwards! Another scene has been colored and the end gets closer with each passing week. As a treat, I thought I would post the animatic of one of the scenes. This is what my animators and I used as a guideline for what our animation needed to look like. 

In this scene, the toys Princess tried storing in her closet burst out and overtake her and her Mom. 

The Clean Up Process

A great presentation by Blue Sky yesterday kept me from posting a Pick-Up Princess update until today.

I've mentioned before that I'm at the tail end of clean up and about to begin color, so I thought I would share a few examples of what that is and why it is necessary before any coloring can happen.

The animation that my crew helped me out on was the rough animation. This is where all the movement is worked out and the pacing is established. While the animator needs to keep the basic shapes of the character consistent, they have more wiggle room when it comes to keeping the character looking exactly like the character sheet and in a first pass, it's not important for them to be very clean with their lines. Rough animation is all about gesture, moving your lines, and letting expression control your hand. That's what makes it so fun.

Clean up is all about precision. The scene is about to move into color and the colorists need to know where to put that color. So not only must the lines be clean, but the character must match the character sheet to remain consistent through out the piece.To maintain consistency, I am doing all the clean up for this project myself.  It's a tedious job, but a necessary one.

Here are a few examples of the two:

rough animation by eric monchello 

 

rough animation by margaretta westerman

rough animation by debbie scheller 

 

The Pick-Up Princess--Character Sheet 3

Color is almost in full swing! This week I finished getting another scene ready for color by cleaning it up from its original rough animation. Now there are just three more scenes to do before all focus can be shifted to color! 

This is the final character in the animated children's e-book, The Pick-Up Princess, that I am working on. 

The cat character is the fun bit of comedy relief through out the animations. On top of that, it's the kind of character that animators love to draw. Because it's such a simple form, my team and I really tried to squash and stretch this character to get some interesting cat-like movement. With any luck, the audience will enjoy the character as much as we enjoyed animating it. 

Happy Easter

I'm a bit late in saying it, but Happy Easter everyone! 

The Pick-Up Princess--We Have Color!

Despite a pretty heavy work load from school, production of the animated children's e-book, The Pick-Up Princess, is still going strong! This week I have a few screen shots of the first fully colored animation! 1 down, 13 more to go! This scene was completely done by myself, but hopefully in the coming weeks I will be able to show some of the work from the talented crew of colorists that are also working on the project. 

The Pick-Up Princess--Character Sheet 2

Another update! Here is the character sheet for Princess's Mom. 

As far as production is going: right now I am in the clean-up and coloring stage. Unfortunately, I won't be able to meet the Easter deadline that I had hoped to meet six months ago (every production has it's hiccups), but I'm nearing the home stretch! 

With luck,  I'll have some screen shots of a few fully finished scenes next week. Stay tuned! 

Princess's Mom is caring but can only handle her daughters mess for so long. It is her parental duty to teach Princess to manage her things, lest they take over completely!

The Pick-Up Princess--Character Sheet 1

For the past six months I have been working on an animated children's e-book called The Pick-Up Princess. The project has been pretty hush-hush for the most part, but I just got the ok from my editor to start posting some sneak peeks and updates! My hope is to keep the updates coming each week, so stop in to see what's new. 

Here's the basic story: A little girl finds creative ways to avoid cleaning her room. 

Princess Character Sheet 

Princess is your average little girl with no desire to clean her room. She is fun, energetic, and a bit of a klutz. She's sweet, but she feels she has better things to do than pick up.