Applied animation - Rough animatic

This is the rough animatic for the story board

Applied Animation - Story Board rough

These is the rough storyboard covering the synopsis from the previous post.

Applied Animation - Initial Story Ideas

At the start when coming up with a story board there was one idea i definitely wanted and that was for the title sequence to be revealed using the dragon, so the dragon would fly across the screen and as it passes by it reveals the title credits.

However i didn't know what to do after wards i was unsure whether or not to have it at the start or the end and how i get to that point as well as what could be the establishing shot. I wanted to have a scene where Brom was teaching Eragon how to sword fight and it to transition to the enemy by closing in on Dragons back and back out again to reveal Brom having vanished and replaced with the Shade to hint at his death. All these scenes however didn't have a
nice enough flow and would of been too quick not giving enough chance to be on screen so i was struggling.

It was then suggested that i look into the synopsis on the back, which proved to be a really effective way of coming up with a title sequence because a synopsis is essentially a title sequence or preview to get you interested in a book instead of a film.

'When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realises he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the empire itself.
Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic and power. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the empire may rest in his hands...'

With this i was able to come up with a starting point, Eragon finds the egg in the woods, this moves on to the dragon flying title sequence with the bright light and then the Ra'zac jump down from above darkening it so its almost 'overnight' that the change happens and he is facing off against the enemy in a dark and dingy world, he is then saved by Saphira who carries him and Arya off signifying that he will become a dragon rider but because Brom was left behind it signifies that he is not with them at this point (he's dead now).

Applied Animation - Height Board

I created a height chart in order to see how large each of the characters were in comparison to the dragon, i especially wanted to know with Eragon as there could be a scene where he's riding the dragon at some point. Because the Dragons still young i made her quite small in comparison to the other characters, still larger though i also took into consideration a piece of fan art that shows the varying sizes of all the dragons from the series. It presents humans as being a lot smaller than i have so i wanted to make them a bit closer in scale.

Applied Animation - Ra'zac Colour

With the Ra'zac, like with Brom, the robes were to yellow and golden in colour this did not fit the Ra'zacs disgusting nature at all so i darkened the robe and even made the beak a dark green but this didn't work either as the green looked really out of place so i went back to the original beak colour as well as making the shade of brown that the robe is a bit lighter so that the lines were more visible. I like the inverted eye as whites in an eye always seemed like a more human element to me so these creatures having inverted eyes causes them to look even more less human.

Applied Animation - Shade Colour

With the shade i focused on the fact his hair and eyes were described as maroon and crimson, adding these colours as highlights to his outfit that was primarily black the pale gray wasnt menacing enough so in the second iteration i made his clothes and his skin darker, this worked well on the clothes however the darker skin made his nose which was orange now look really stupid so i went back to the original paler skin which looked a lot better now with the darker clothes to counter the pale skin.

Applied Animation - Saphira Colour

With Sapphire, the dragon, she was described as having shining blue scales so i wanted them to be a blue that wasn't harsh or off putting but soft to look at, however it soon became apparent that i was in need of some varying shades of blue, because i wasn't going to be putting any shadows or shading into the animation i had to add paler blue markings to her body to make parts stand out more and to give her more depth and look less flat.

Applied Animation - Brom Colour

With from i tried what i thought was a light brown at first but was more of a yellow colour this didn't work it made him look too holy and didn't fit his character it also clashed with his darker skin and the grey beard looked very off. The second attempt i tried to make his skin and hair paler but made his robes a dark brown but this proved to be to dark and the outlines became lost so i lightened it to make the outlines clearer. His robes were described as similar to a friars.

Applied Animation - Eragon Colour

When i drew out Eragons final design i was actually really happy with it from the start as the colours all had a dirty and worn felt to them being dirty shades of their colours. I chose to make his eyes blue for two reasons, one was so that they stood out amongst the dull greys and browns and two was so it would match the colour of the dragon sort of like there was a visual link between the two of them, like there is in the book with a spiritual link.

Applied Animation - Arya Colour

When it came to colour i chose to digitise the characters so it would be faster and easier to animate. the initial colour palette for Arya was fairly pale with the pale skin being lost in the bright yellow collar. I chose green because when i thought of an elven character i saw it as being close to nature and green is associated with nature so i wanted to focus on the prospects of natural colours. I also considered this in her eye colour. the difference between the left and right is with the placement of the face the fringe is too low as is the head so i brought them up slightly so she didn't have a massive forehead.

I made her clothes darker because the pale ones were too weak in colour so i wanted a more stronger shade of green and the brown and gold had to be darker to match. I made the hair paler so that i could have a dark out line that was visible. This however didn't look to great so i went back to the complete black to give her more of the raven hair look described in the book.

Applied Animation - Saphira final designs

The designs of my dragon  took a very dynamic change the designs became much simpler and smooth. I looked at the animals in Song of the sea and how they all have a very weighted design being very heavy footed and bulky. So i wanted to draw with this in mind while trying to get across a feminine look.

These two designs didn't look right and they were very boring as well as her overall shape looking too lifeless and blocky.




I looked back at the old designs and simplified them to fit the art style but i couldn't figure out how i wanted the wings to look so in the end i went with wings reminiscent of butterfly wings.

Applied Animation - Shade final design

I thought of characters that had the defined and prominent cheek bones and pursed lips and decided to look at the grand council woman from lilo and stitch. She had a very thin and aged face which because she was an alien looked very unique and i felt could be easily applied to my character so after drawing it out i drew it again but with the protruding cheeks joining like a normal head. This head looked great because it looked very menacing and not stupid. His clothes were still not quite right as the robe looked very odd and impossible to visualise. I decided to draw him with clothing closer to the manuverability of a warrior so that it would fit better when he holds a sword.

Applied Animation - Shade initial designs

Out of all the characters designs i feel this will be the most reminiscent of the live action character as they were fairly faithful to him. My initial struggles were with the head shape as well as what this character would be wearing. Shades were described as possessed mages but this one thought with a sword so i didn't know wether or not to put him in robes or armour resulting in a very poorly and boring designed outfit. I like the crooked nose as its very prominent in his design and it doesn't look cute or pretty. My main overall concern was wether or not he'd look too similar to the elf character (pointed ears and slanted eyes).











The first three were all failures the clothes and the face shape all look weird i wanted to give him sharp cheek bones and pursed lips to make him look drained and more lifeless but they didn't look appealing at all. The other two designs were better, i liked the hands and arms wanting to keep those but the long hooded robe has been used quite a few times so i think i can find a variant, I'm still not happy with the face shape.

Applied Animation - Brom final design

This was the final design i came up with for Brom, the old wise man. I tried to take aspects of the wispy beard and the tall hood from the earlier iterations and i also used the droopy eyes in his design as well, but to counter the droopiness of him i made his eyebrows very fierce and focused to show that there is direction in this character and he isn't so aloof. the hands were interesting to do, I thought of how they could appear as talons and imagined curved fingers along with flat ends hey still looked like talons but they didn't need to be pointed.

Applied Animation - Brom early designs

From was the elderly and wise character who taught Eragon. Multiple times from is described as being eagle like, large eagle nose and talon like hands so i wanted this to come across in his design that he was almost like a bird. He was described as having a large white beard and taught Eragon sword play as well as the dragon riders so i had to make him look both wise enough and strong enough to be able to teach both these things so i couldn't make him a fat or large character as i felt he had to be able to move swiftly. These early designs i didn't like because they didn't look interesting enough or unique enough. I like however his long wispy beard so i want to keep that in his design, almost the longer the better as the short ones look rather lifeless.







The designs on the left are all really dull the beak nose has no character to them, i thought about the owl character from song of the sea and how her character carried weight so i tried to create a very large character but it really didn't fit his actions and personality the other two were just so lifeless and dead they didn't make interesting silhouettes.

It was suggested that i tried adding a hood to my character as his bald head was what made him look strange. The hood really helped. it made his overall look appear more mystical and it gave more life to a previously dull character it also helped remove the empty space that came after the head. My favourite was the far left but it still needed work as he looked a little too thin and weak to pose a threat so i drew the second iteration with this one he was starting to lose his uniqueness as he started to look fairly generic and didn't feel like the same style as the other characters. The third version is very much the most bird like of the lot but what i really liked was his droopy eyes but not the droopy eyebrows i want hi  to have a strong expression to show he's been through the wars, so to speak.

Applied Animation - Ra'zac designs

The Ra'zac were crooked and vile creatures that fed on human flesh and had humanoid body shapes and bird like faces, monster birds at that. They wore long hoods to conceal their disgusting body. I wanted there bodies to be almost ethereal, so the robes hugged their bodies tightly with hunched and crooked shoulders. the earlier iterations had a much clearer face and was more human in shape than the final design which became a very exaggerated and twisted human form. The bandages come from the design of the live action versions which looked more like rotting mummies which i liked so i imagine underneath the robes their bodies are covered in these bandages. As i redrew it i realised it had to be more of an unknown entity as in the first part of the book they are kept very elusive even though we are made quite aware of their presence through their actions, so i came to the conclusion that they won't have sleeves but their robes will conceal them entirely and i made the beak down turned and much more slender too add to their sinister feel, villains i have found tend to have sharper and rigid shapes when they are inherently bad.