So before the weekend starts I'd like to kick off my first batch of resolutions - my "Finish Me!" three month series. I'm starting off nice and easy - a bit of animation I began a couple months ago and had pushed aside until now.
I'm in love with the Japanese film
Wanpaku Ôji no Orochi Taiji (sometimes called
The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanpaku_Ouji_no_Orochi_Taiji)
and draw a lot of visual inspiration from it. It's fairly simple in terms of story, but the execution feels like a very nostalgic fantasy.
I started the ruffs in Flash, and had just started cleaning up the keys, but want to take it into Toon Boom and clean up the animation from there. I've been working in their Harmony software and am quickly becoming a fan of the program. For the background I've got a couple ideas to work out in After Effects, but we'll see about that later.
A model sheet from the film - I love the simple design of the characters, but they all still exhibit clean action lines and emotion.
So when I set about thinking of a small bit of animation I could start for practice - something that I didn't have to necessarily design from scratch and just focus on straight animation and compositing while sticking to a finished model - Susano, the main character from
Little Prince popped into my head. He rides the most adorable little Pegasus, and the action directed for the horse is hilarious and fun, not strict and literal.
Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to find a good copy of the movie - it seems to be one of those films confined to a vault and only available on an obscure DVD copy or two (that's not in my region code, OF COURSE). The only copy I have is a recorded television broadcast, in a fairly obnoxious English dub, but, ah well what can ya do =\.
