Major Project: Le Patissier, Environment Design I

While, on one side I have been doing boards for the animatic, I have also been moving along with the other tasks in pre-production, and aiming to finish the designing stage very soon. with the character done I moved into visualizing the environment. yummy!

I have done some initial thumbnails of the 2 environments that my animation will have. the patisserie and the cake world.

 With a few favourites of mine, respectively. 3, 5 and6, i decided to take one further, and produce a concept art.

 

A few more to come!! Stay Tuned!!

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Major Project: Le Patissier, Final Title Choice

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Major Project: Le Patissier, Prop Design

While I starting to draw the storyboard, I took some time to explore the important props for the animation. These being the cake, the piping bag and the spatula.

While designing the piping bag, i came across and idea which can influence the animation, while the piping bag will assume a normal role in the real world being used by the patissier. In the cake world I firstly had the idea to have it become an oversized one which the patisserie carries over his shoulder. However as i was exploring a different idea came to my mind. having the piping bag as a companion to the patissier as he bounces the piping bag accompanies him, behaving and decorating on his own. In terms of animation it would be literally like animating a prop by maybe using blend-shapes and little rig. Having these prop assuming this position towards the patissier will allow me to use it a few times throughout the animation, and use it surely in repetition.

Therefore I initially began exploring it.

 With the developing and brainstorming of the prop, I arrived to a design which is little a minimalist version of the patissier a chubby, short cute prop little helper.Therefore I decided to create a quick turnaround to help me model it. 

I have also explored the look of the spatula. 

 

Last but not least, I have explored initially the cake design. I decided to create profile and top view of the cake, explaining all the elements I want to add. Also in order to research my cake details I opted to draw and specify their look. 

Further cake design will be done already in 3D where i will mock up a cake and apply these elements and then play easily with colour. Yum! 

Finally, while designing and developing the cake, I came across another idea to influence the story. When i  talked with Phil last week, he suggested me to use the screen frame and position in my favour, for instance having a character walking from left to right on the ground floor where other would go down to the top. of the right side. This idea would work great when the character is creating the wall of icing roses on the side of the cake. As my initial idea was to have the character steps become the flowers, the idea of using the frame would emphasize the upward decoration visible on the cake design and would enforce believability.

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Major Project: Le Patissier Title Experiment

As a working title, my animation has as title Le Patissier, meaning the Pastry Chef in English. With these working title, I began experimenting with fonts in order to get the title designed.

In my opinion, the titles which work best are number 1 and 2, however I'm more inclined to number 1, as I really like the curvature of the font, it is interesting that it also reminds me cake writing with the piping bag.

**EDIT:

After receiving some feedback about the font, I decided to explore the many effects on the first font design, from the page above I really like number 2, the bold version of it. As it keeps the simple but chubbier.

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Major Project: Olivier, the Patissier, Final Character Pose & Profile Sheet

Here it is the final character design painting, I have used the precious pose and decided to paint it.

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Major Project: Olivier, the Patissier, Final Character Pose & Silhouette

With most of the design sheets done, what is left is to pose the character, and paint it.

here is the final pose and the silhouette, to see if it is working as a recognizable character.

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Major Project: Olivier, the Patissier, Expression Sheet

As promised here is the expression sheet for Olivier, this sheet features possible expressions that Olivier may do throughout the animation, with these drawings I will be able to recreate this same expressions in 3D.

In terms of character design tasks, I almost done with everything, only left is a few action shots and the final pose digitally painted.

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