Thanks Adrian!
We have made big strides with our story and animatic over the past few days - I’m very excited to share it with you once we tune things up.
In the meantime, one of our very talented artists, Claire Hummel, has painted some beautiful concept ideas for our main character. We hope you enjoy - more on the way!
the concept drawings are looking sweet! I like your story too, cool idea regarding the ten theme. Awesome work
From what I am seeing so far, this looks pretty awesome. i can’t wait to see what you guys produce!
The story sounds fantastic, the power of the imagination, I like.
On the other hand the character design is amazing too. I’ll be following this post.
Thanks everyone for the kind words! We’ve now passed our story milestone and I’m currently breaking down shot and asset lists - lots of progress to come!
I have started modeling a few pieces of the backyard set in order to start defining the shape language of our film. This is a quick modeling sketch to explore the style and scales that we’ll be using. Note that this is submitted under concept art (not wip) because this is just one style idea that we may or may not go with. Comments and crits would be appreciated!
Hey everyone,
I’ve decided to upload a one minute clip so you can see some of our story progress. This is just a snippet from our very rough animatic sequence. This animatic was put together solely for the purpose of story work and shot timing - these boards are not indicative of artistic style, camera angles, layout, or animation. This just helped us see how our story plays out visually. I am in the process of replacing this animatic with a 3D-layout animation that will show our actual camera angles.
Sources:
NBC News theme song
Rocky theme song
www.rocketroberts.com (rocket workbench image)
istock photo (school bus)
www.freesound.org
Main character concept: Claire Hummel
All other sounds and drawings by Kevin McNamara.
Good work! I like the pace of the animatic so far, it retains the viewer’s interest throughout.
Hi KMcNamara …i like the character so much and also the animatic.Waiting for the next post.
Good luck…
hey man, great start and I love the character designs! pls pass on my high five to Claire 
looking fwd to the full animatic!
The calendar shot feels a bit short, maybe add a few frames more to read in the information.
I’m wondering if there’s a way to tighten up the pace slighty so you can get quicker into the story of him building his rocket…
What if you start with the an establishing shot of the house, and a school bus rolls in, he runs quickly into his room to get started. The calendar could be in his room by the door, and you can frame on that close up as he runs by. He doesn’t need to stop as I think it’s quite clear already that’s he’s eager for that calendar date from the framing of the shot.
anyway just some ideas… he’s kinda hard to explain in words… hope it’s makes sense.
shot numbers would be cool to make it easier to crit ;p
Adam and suru, thanks for the kind words!
Martin, great advice! I think you’re onto something with moving the calendar into his bedroom (and I agree that the I need to give the viewer more time to read it). Thanks!
Always looking to cut things down a bit since the full animatic is four minutes right now 
ok, I like to see the full Animatic. and I agree four minutes is a little long, it’s always good to look at where you can cut without affecting the narrative of story.
But if the story takes four minutes or more to be well told, no way. prepare the coffee, and fill with patience for rendering.
Lots of progress over the past few days - we’ll be ready to show some more soon but for now we’ve uploaded a model turntable of the tree that will be in the back yard. I’ll be bringing it into Houdini for some procedural L-system leaves, updates coming soon!
Link to the turntable: http://challenge.cgsociety.org/ten/entry/KMcNamara/work_in_progress/10002676
Our main character in profile and front view for modeling reference.
Updates on our back yard set coming tomorrow night!
Brought the ZBrush tree (turntable is a few posts up) into Houdini for some leaves with some nice results - shaded version coming soon!
Starting to get a feel for how we’re going to lay out the back yard set. Here’s a quick AO pass of what we’ve got at the moment. I’m also mostly done with the shading so I’ll get that posted up within a few days.
Turntable work in progress of our main character’s head! Still lots more to do here with the eyes, mouth, hair, and some of the shapes in general, but I wanted to keep you guys posted on our progress!
Click the image to see the turntable
This really speaks to me! I was totally into rocketry as a kid- that looks like my old bench! Nice modelling and concepts- I look forward to the rest!
This is coming along great man, I really love the mood you’re setting and your concepts are awesome! Can’t wait to see the end result.
