Design Process

Concept Board



What you see above is the initial concept of the main character.

Character Design

• Skeleton Jack

Clearly an homage to Samurai Jack, this oriental treasure hunter is as bad-ass as (that was a mouthful) Genndy Tartakovsky's popular Samurai Jack.

The origins of Skeleton Jack is of yet unexplored and we just have to assume he doesn't eat very much. His anatomy isn't too accurate in the concept board show above.

Limbs and any articulatory appendages are simplified in order to ease animation.

Lookie, its little ol' Samurai Jack.

• Gui the Temple Apparition

The powerful apparition which guards the Terracotta Squid. Contrary to what the top image would convey, Gui is not a wugui, therefore is perfectly as untortoise-like as you can not imagine.

Later, I came up with one of those hideous ghost demons that you usually see on Chinese New Year. After a few more sketches I decided to ease my workload by simplifying Gui into something less hideous and slightly more appealing but still maintain a certain level of menace.

I also experimented with a dragon/serpent design but decided that with my inexperience, I would have problems animating the damn thing.

• Little Baby Guis

Creepy little creatures that are supposedly offspring of powerful ghosts. Only two made it into the treatment so far as having more may convey a sense of "he doesn't love that one as much as that other one"-ness.

• Temple Guardians

Mechanized guardians of the Temple. Design greatly influenced by robots from the Samurai Jack episode "Samurai vs. Samurai". They have blades for arms and uniform roughly similiar with the Terracotta army armor theme.

Background and Prop Design

The treasure was initially a fruit, a gold ingot and a ruby squid. But ruby squids don't really fit in an oriental setting. Terracotta it is then! Though it's not reaaaally that valuable. Then again, that might explain the ending.

The temple design was based upon a few reference images of pagodas which I didn't save because I sketched on the spot.

I always loved those curvy hills that you see in a lot of "China" tagged images so that's what I plan to use as the main background scenery in the animation.

Treatment
A treasure hunter, Skeleton Jack, clearly an homage to the Genndy Tartakovsky (I can't get enough of saying that name) TV series, Samurai Jack, finds the Temple Of The Terracotta Squid, grabs the goods, becomes hunted and a touching ending ends the ending.

Name Change

At some point during the making of the animation I had to change my name and flee the country. I mean I renamed the title of the animation to correspond to a little gimmick that I worked into the end of the animation. Without it, there wouldn't be any contrast in mood in the animation. The initial title was Skeleton Jack and the Temple of the Terracotta Squid.

SRI Research

In addition to actually animating, I also did some research on creating the most appealing animation style and technique. This was done during a course which taught us the methods of research.

A


B

My research focused on animation techniques and character design.

For example, the character in A has a poor silhoutte and pose, one of the many reasons why some flash animations on Newgrounds look poor.

I also did research on the simplification of the design of the character. Simple designs are not only easy to animate but are also visually appealing.

Details on this research can be found here.