Transforming Violet the Wonderduck
This weekend, I made progress on Violet’s Journey, our animated fairy tale featuring Natalina’s art ducks.
These new mockups show what Violet could look like with a beaded skirt and a new pair of wings, against different backgrounds. For this prototype, I mounted an oval plate between her belly and the robot base, then loosely hung some of Natalina's beads, for discussion purposes. I then superimposed my green screen capture of this prototype against some of the nature photos we used for the first storyboard, as well as a simpler backdrop using silhouetted shapes and gradient lighting.
Our first goal for this test is to cover the wheels and robot parts below the duck’s belly, as they seem out of place for a fairy tale. To that end, we plan to create a beaded curtain, using necklaces from Natalina’s treasure trove of jewels.
The second goal is to make Violet more expressive, as the decoy ducks are static and can’t show their feelings very well. To that end, we’re considering giving her new wings that could flap in different ways to show a range of emotions. These wings could be laser cut out of white or translucent acrylic, backlit with neopixels and made to flap gently with a servo motor attached to the oval float.
Lastly, we are experimenting with different background styles, ranging from photo-realistic backdrops to simpler landscapes with painted shapes and lighting. These simple shapes could be cut out on cardboard -- or laser cut on thin wood: I now have tons of vector files to choose from, besides the chinese landscape I used in this test. Both the forest and the cave would seem easy to implement. This first mockup is very flat, but we can add more color and texture over the laser cut shapes, to make them more real.
What do you think? Is it OK that Violet is not floating on water like a normal duck, but hovering over the ground with a beaded skirt and twitchy wings? How do you like the new backdrop idea? I think this could work if we set it up in a magical world, with surreal landscapes not just photo-realistic nature shots.
View more photos of Violet’s Journey and the Wonderbots experiment: bit.ly/wonderbot-photos
Check out our story guide for this work progress:
docs.google.com/document/d/1ceHph_XI-3m1mBk4lpduQ-JgCzGrH...
Transforming Violet the Wonderduck
This weekend, I made progress on Violet’s Journey, our animated fairy tale featuring Natalina’s art ducks.
These new mockups show what Violet could look like with a beaded skirt and a new pair of wings, against different backgrounds. For this prototype, I mounted an oval plate between her belly and the robot base, then loosely hung some of Natalina's beads, for discussion purposes. I then superimposed my green screen capture of this prototype against some of the nature photos we used for the first storyboard, as well as a simpler backdrop using silhouetted shapes and gradient lighting.
Our first goal for this test is to cover the wheels and robot parts below the duck’s belly, as they seem out of place for a fairy tale. To that end, we plan to create a beaded curtain, using necklaces from Natalina’s treasure trove of jewels.
The second goal is to make Violet more expressive, as the decoy ducks are static and can’t show their feelings very well. To that end, we’re considering giving her new wings that could flap in different ways to show a range of emotions. These wings could be laser cut out of white or translucent acrylic, backlit with neopixels and made to flap gently with a servo motor attached to the oval float.
Lastly, we are experimenting with different background styles, ranging from photo-realistic backdrops to simpler landscapes with painted shapes and lighting. These simple shapes could be cut out on cardboard -- or laser cut on thin wood: I now have tons of vector files to choose from, besides the chinese landscape I used in this test. Both the forest and the cave would seem easy to implement. This first mockup is very flat, but we can add more color and texture over the laser cut shapes, to make them more real.
What do you think? Is it OK that Violet is not floating on water like a normal duck, but hovering over the ground with a beaded skirt and twitchy wings? How do you like the new backdrop idea? I think this could work if we set it up in a magical world, with surreal landscapes not just photo-realistic nature shots.
View more photos of Violet’s Journey and the Wonderbots experiment: bit.ly/wonderbot-photos
Check out our story guide for this work progress:
docs.google.com/document/d/1ceHph_XI-3m1mBk4lpduQ-JgCzGrH...