The Final Showreel!

Here it be! The final showreel.

The King

Okay! Muscle man's scrapped. There was something I just didn't like about his character. I may revisit him in a later project, but I'd rather this project kept chugging along, instead of stalling at anything needlessly complicated.

Good news, though! I finished animating a little piece of test animation for 'The Wall'. I wanted to see how the King would behave and how I could visualise my vision of his character - a large, but childlike, King, who means well but is a burden to his people.

Also, I've been figuring a few things out regarding Adobe Premiere. It turns out I can import raw SWF files straight into Premiere without having to export them as a video first. It cuts down on rendering time, and minimises loss of image quality due to compression. The downside of this is that you only get to see the King as an animated GIF for now.

Sorry!

Concept Art

Some concept art for the characters of The Wall, and further development of Basil Fawlty.

The Wall:

Basil:

For The Wall, The King is more or less established, being such a simple character, so less aesthetic development is required (there are some other concept sketches, though - watch this space). Basil, on the other hand, has to be an authentic caricature of John Cleese but simplistic enough to animate successfully.

More of the same soon!

Working Title: 'The Wall'

I have an idea for a short film, the production of which I shall incorporate into my showreel. I'm not committing myself to completing it by the end of this year, but whatever I complete will be valuable material.
The idea itself belongs to Estelle Sharpe, but she comes up with original ideas for films with such alarming rapidity she doesn't mind me using it.

It's about a kingdom of people building a large wall, to protect themselves from an impending invasion. Work is coming along nicely, when the king arrives. Initially imposing and authoritative, he immediately reveals himself to be very childish and overly-enthusiastic about something of which he has very little knowledge or ability. He tries to assist in the wall-building process, but his large frame and inherent stupidity only serves to hinder their progress (with suitably slapstick results). His subjects revolt in frustration, and put him in stocks (complete with additional iron ball on a chain), where he is to stay until the wall is completed.

Progress on the wall improves and morale in the kingdom is at a high, until a worker drops a hammer while passing the king in his stocks. The king, still eager to help, breaks free from the stocks' foundations (still encased in the main section), retrieves the hammer, and in the process of turning round to find the worker, swings his iron ball in a massive sideways arc...

...straight into the wall.

Through the debris, a crowd of enemy soldiers can be seen on the horizon. The workers look despondent.