Animatic

Here is the animatic for the upcoming 30 second piece I am currently working on, entitled "The Time I Like Best". The animation is the next stage, and David and I will be working on the project using CelAction. The simple 2D look is intended to help achieve a very simplistic look, which would give this piece a warm, fuzzy feeling that people get around Christmas time. This ties in with the theme and subject matter of the poem the film is based on.

Character Bio and Designs: Spyder

The following post includes a character bio and designs created for our modelmaking project, where we were asked to create a woodland creature (although the characters don't have to belong in a woodland in any stories or films about them).  The woodland creature-based character will eventually be made into a model by Christmas.

Character Bio:

Spyder is a lovable hero who works for a large, underground organisation working to give spiders everywhere a much better reputation and future. Spyder is himself a spider who has nicknamed himself ‘Spyder’ to make himself sound ‘really cool’; one of many examples of how vain Spyder is at times. He can be very self-centred and is very interested in defeating the bad guys and winning the hearts of the ladies, giving his Boss concerns that Spyder doesn’t understand fully how espionage works. Spyder’s mishaps make him clumsy and incompetent at times, which constantly winds up his Boss, and he always takes the credit every time his Boss teams him up with a new sidekick. Strangely though, it’s often Spyder’s incompetence that proves useful in getting the job done, and Spyder always does get the job done, much to his Boss’ extreme annoyance. His Boss would love to fire him and run his organisation better, but the authorities hear about Spyder’s many successes and believe Sypder is actually their best agent, so they always refuse. Although he doesn’t show it, Spyder is actually very observant and extremely dedicated to his missions, despite his clumsiness. It may take longer for Spyder to solve mysteries and crimes due to his bumbling nature, but it’s always worth it because remarkably noone else can get the job done as efficiently as he can. His life is espionage and this is his main interest in life. He does have a caring side which he mainly shows around his family, and he is happy to make his mum and dad proud every time he goes out to do “spy stuff they wouldn’t understand about”.

The organisation exists to keep all efforts going to restore peace between spiders and humans, who actually had a very strong friendship thousands of years ago around the world. Sadly, the humans seem to have forgotten this important piece of history, and instantly see spiders as disgusting creatures who are a threat to humans everywhere. The humans don’t understand the spiders only work to defend themselves and have never actually killed anyone (well, except in Brazil, anyway…).

Spyder is a character who has potential to star in his own movies or TV series aimed at younger children, whilst keeping it fun for adults to watch as well, as many mainstream animated films attempt to do. Spyder would be a homage to the entire spy genre, referencing the James Bond series (e.g. Spyder is Agent 008, or Agent Eightlegs), Mission: Impossible, the Pink Panther series, etc.

Spyder is, of course, an anthropomorphic spider who only bears certain characteristics to a real spider. Spyder was inspired by domestic house spiders, and his design still keeps a realistic body faithful to what a house spider really looks like. However, I went through many designs for the character’s face. Many real spiders have eight eyes, so I also wanted Spyder to have eight eyes, but this proved challenging to put on a protagonist without making the eyes too distracting. I went through many designs, but eventually went around this problem by enlarging and exaggerating the middle eyes, so these would become the main focus of the character. Some designs also show Spyder supporting a quadorcle (as opposed to a monocle) as a homage to literary characters such as Sherlock Holmes.