Over the last few weeks, I have began making assets for my Little Red Riding Hood animation. Firstly I started by listing everything I would need to make the scenes, using the script. Then I started by beginning to make the backgrounds. I twisted up some paper I had lying around, and took photos of it to cut out and use in the creepy forest.
I cut out the twisted up paper from the photo, then overlaid them to create the trunk and branches of a tree, which I added leaves to with the paint tool. I used the twisted up paper because, when I was a child, and trees were described to me as 'twisted' I used to imagine them looking this way, and I felt that would give an interesting Arts and Crafts effect. I chose to make the leaves purple as a stylized indicator of the night's darkness.
After that, I drew a background and overlaid the trees, to make a full backdrop for a scene.
While I was doing this, I also went onto the internet and found a bunch of textures and images which I felt I could use, and would be interesting to use. I collected them all into a Word document.
Some of the things I had collected in this Word document were silhouettes of trees, which I used to define the outline of the tree trunk and branches of my lighter trees. I cut out a brown paper texture I'd found with these outlines, then I used the same brush in the Paint tool to create the leaves.
I created three trees this way, then used them to construct another tree background.
The third tree background I constructed was made in much the same way, using the same trees as the second, but I adjusted the hue and saturation on them to make them darker and less cheerful. However, I do feel that I have not done so enough, causing the transition between the green trees and the purple to feel too sudden.
When I was finished with the trees, I started creating other assets, mostly the Grand Abbess' hall. I first drew the lineart for it in Adobe Illustrator, then coloured and textured it in Photoshop, using a texture from the Word Document. I decided to use a mostly red and gold theme for the nuns, Abbess, and Grand Abbess, as those colours are both warm and regal.
Once this asset was completed, I arranged it into a background, prepared to be an establishing shot of the Grand Abbess' hall. I used photos of the sky in all my outdoor backgrounds, because I felt that gave and interesting effect. Along with the different textures, they give something of a crafty feel, almost like a collage, but not overpoweringly so.
As I was creating the backgrounds, I started to animate the characters themselves. Namely, the walking loop of Red that will be reused in the animation. I scanned the frames I had done, to animate them in Photoshop and test that they worked. I realised that I needed to add more frames to the cycle, it was too clunky otherwise.
Over the next few weeks, until the Christmas holidays, I'd like to complete a few more backgrounds, and add more frames to the loop of Red. I'd also like to get started on the loop of Wolf walking, which is very likely to involve looking up how actual wolves walk.
By the 10th, I definitely want to complete some assets of the Grand Abbess' study, namely the bookcases I've started working on. By the end of the 11th, I want to have Red's walk cycle working better, as well as starting some work on the forests that will appear after Red and Wolf have encountered the hunter. By the 18th, I want to have done some research into Wolf's walk cycle, as well have started animating it. I also plan to work on more background assets at home.
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