Final Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVMnsJbvIlk

Rationale

Everything in 'How to Train Your Dragon' is a bit chaotic when it comes to structure, which gives it a unique style so I chose to design my shapes with emphasis on stretching and squashing areas, and keeping everything not quite perfect. I used a filtered 'cartoony' style for my textures to keep to the bright and gentle textures of the film.
The environment I have modeled is a small dock designed specifically for trading with other colonies of Vikings. because the Island of Berk is always being attacked by dragons, so the Vikings would obviously have to trade supplies to survive.
The main aesthetic that ensures the HTTYD style is the ships main structure beam. It is in the shape of a dragons head leading down to the tail, which makes it clearly a viking ship. I have also made the islands cliffs rise up out of the camera shot because Berk has a strong representative style of giant cliffs.
I have chosen to use a quiet song from the HTTYD soundtrack, along with sound effects of the sea and a boat rocking to make the scene more believable.

Rendering

I have been doing a lot of tests because rendering seems to take a veeery long time

Overnight it managed to render everything

Storyboard

I drew up a rough storyboard to visualize where the camera will go and decide on what shots I want in the 30 seconds

More Lighting

The inside of the boat has been too dark with most tests so I have set a small light inside of it, and angled the sun to shine further inside and I am happy with the results

The interior looks much better, I made sure the rays of light hit at least one shelf to get a really cool shading effect

Render Tests

I have been practicing with rendering and trying different approaches of lighting

Still texturing

Texturing takes a long time, and I have taken inspiration from the movies textures its self. I also added some water effects. If I have time I will improve on the water by for now it will do.

Texturing

I have finished the new docks and have started assigning textures to each object.

New Scenery

I have changed my idea to a new scene, the main object is now a trading ship, at its own private docks. The Island of Berk is constantly being attacked by dragons, so the Vikings would obviously need to trade with other Viking colonies to survive, so I will be depicting that.

Boat interior

  I have been working on all the objects to go inside the supply ship

Docks and interior

I have been looking closely at the structures in the movie to insure my dock scene come out similar

I also have been working on sketches of what I want to go inside the boat

Boats

I looked at how the viking boats are structured in the movie and drew up a sketch of how I want my boat to look

It has an added hut on the actual ship to hold all the supplies

Mapping

I sketched the layout of the scene and created two rough images of how I want the scene to look

 

Project 2

For project 2 I have selected 'How To Train Your Dragon' as the movie I will be creating a new scene for. I have decided to create a supply ship to include into the scene at 1:06:30 where the ships are being prepared to sail to Helheims Gate. The movie doesn't show any supplies being loaded, which is where my ship will come in.

There will be strong shadows as it is the middle of the day, and the cliffs will cast some long shadows but I will make sure not to cover anything important in darkness.
The docks are very rough and messy already, but with lots of small details. I will also try to make some sort of water animation.
I will photoshop the textures before importing them to give them a softer feel which will fit in with the movies aesthetic effectively.
The camera shots will be wide at first, then a fly-through will go inside the ship to show the smaller objects inside

Animation

Animatic

Here is the animatic used for seeing how the animation will play, and how I can improve timing and shots

Rationale

Through researching the Jack & Jill nursery rhyme I found many different theories of what it really means, from two priests negotiating a marriage, Kings being beheaded, to tax prices on liquid. I was also surprised to find more to the rhyme than the first verse, and that each verse following has alternate versions from different origins.

The most popular interpretation seems to be the one where King Charles 1 tried to change the tax prices on liquid and was stopped by parliament, so instead changed the volumes of the Jack (1/2 pint) and as a result so did the Jill (Gill, 1/4 pint). 

I have decided to interpret the rhyme to be in a more modern, but 'cartoony' world. I am keeping the idea that it is a boy and girl, but changed it from children to cats, because I wanted to make it a bit more unique. I chose to interpret it this way so people can hopefully enjoy it a bit more than the traditional dark interpretations, even though mine first appears to be dark I gave it a twist.

I used a sketched, cutout style because I like the idea of being able to draw something and make it come to life through animation. The theme of two cats in the night needed to have a dark appearance, so I tried to stylize the characters and scene as slightly twisted. The text I used for the actual verses are giant bold letters floating in the sky, most of the words are hidden which is intentional because the audience already knows the story of Jack & Jill, and it makes it sit in the background better.

Originally I had decided to use no music but I had an idea whilst animating that the cats will try to make music themselves, and added the appropriate track to go with it.

3D Sketch view testing

Sketch objects

A collection of sketch objects ready for animating

Change of style

I've decided to change the animation style to a more "hand made" look, as seen in the beta of "Don't Starve"