Scene test.

The bubble pop.

As the animation is based on what magic this bubble can bring once you're inside it, I wanted to make a clear division between the reality of being outside the bubble and the surrealism of what you see when you're inside the bubble. So with this, I wanted the bubble pop scene to convey that once it has popped, the boy has popped right back into reality. I played around on Flash for a bit to try and make the pop look as realistic as possible however, I found it to be too neat. I then went onto having a bit of a fiddle around on After Effects by using different solids and shape layers to mimic the stretches and tears you get when a bubble pops. I wont necessarily being using this in the animation but I will be playing around with the tools to give it a more realistic effect.

Bubble grows then pops.

Coloured walk cycle - With and without background.

As the backgrounds are done for the opening scenes, I have added the animation to complete the scenes.

Walk without background.

Shot 1.

Shot 2.

Backgrounds for opening scenes.

It's been a while since doing a blog entry however, I have been working on completing the backgrounds for the first few shots of my animation. Having selected the colour purple as the main colour to emphasise the mysterious and mystical nature of the Magician's magic shop, I played around with the thought of just having the outside colorised in a grey scale. I opted against this once I realised that the brightness of the boy was too obvious against this grey pallet and settled on having a shade of colour that complimented the colour purple to use for the other shops.

Magic shop front view.

Testing the colour of the boy against the tones of purple seen here.

Row of shops.

Additional environment sketches

Rough sketches, to be painted in detail in Photoshop.