Christmas Card Animation

Custard Square asked me to create an animated greeting card using cute dinosaur characters. And of course, I said 'yes'. Before I go on, here is the final animation:

The following are some dino-suit concepts.

Concept Sheet #1

Concept Sheet #2

There were a lot of discussions over what the dinosaur suits should look like. Whether they should have teeth or not because clearly the teeth were too sharp and it looked like the human was being digested...etc. But we came to an agreement once I produced enough designs. I promise you, it wasn't because I was beating them with my nunchucks.

There was a lot of choreography involved also (and lucky for you, the films of myself dancing like a drunk clown have been erased). And after that were samples of the dancing dinos. Here's a couple:

And finally the stage design. So very easy to do in Illustrator. Not so much in Flash. There were a lot of graphics being imported and exported repeatedly between the two software. Flash is NOT kind to drop shadows. Nevertheless I got there in the end, and here is another work in progress image in the template.

Like any other animation, it was lot of hard work (the whole thing had to be done within a month). But even after watching this video 5 billion times, it still makes me laugh, so I am happy I got to work on it.

Character sheet

Here is a giant character sheet of most of Dinosawus characters onboard.

Adventure 4

This is a cheat sheet for Nathan, our programmer to place the graphics in the scene.

The graphics needed for each Adventure are constantly updated and edited to fit the script, so here is Adventure #4.

Membership Advertisement #2

Another DinoSawUs promotional design.
But this time, it's for girls. It was rather a painful process of finding girlish references I had to use, but I think the drawing itself turned out ok.

This is as girly as I could make it. It was more difficult than I thought.

Urgh... So much pink!

Membership advertisement

Promotional character designs

Then comes the advertisement for the membership.

MORE IS MORE!!! MORE MORE MORE!

And of course, the drawing of these characters. This was fun

New Pop Stars!

Here are some funky looking new characters for new Dinosawus members as a part of a promotional package. At this moment, they won't be created as avatars however - it involves too much work!!

Avatar actions

First 3 simple actions I've been working on are: Wave, clap and thumbs-up motions.

Super Dino and his Sidekick

Dinosawus Adventure NPCs - in vector!

The Chief colour concepts

Non Player Characters

For our new "Adventure" - coming soon

Concepts and final design of our Wise Old Chief character. I used Herrerasaurus as they're meant to be the oldest dinosaurs. It also felt as if we did not have enough NZ references, so this was a good chance to get some Maori theme goin on.
This character will be someone the players could seek to get hints for difficult questions


This below is Gertrude the Gastonia. She's the town's witch-like character that kids are frightened of... silly little things.
She'll be one of the NPC's the players can click on to converse with.


Oviraptor is an egg-stealing carnivore in our first "quest".
The name 'Oviraptor' actually means "egg thief" and was obviously very apt to be our little villain.


For Petra the paleontologist I thought it'd be interesting to use Troodon.
Troodon dinosaurs seemed to have the largest brains -in relative to their body) and the scientists believe that they could've possibly been the smartest species.

Interesting fact: Due to the appearance of their teeth Troodon are believed to have been omnivore creatures. They also had massive eyes that were facing forward. This would've given them good depth perception as well as some sweet vision.

Ninja-Sawus!

A drawing for our hard working programmer Nathan, AKA Ninjasawus


Anna's wonderful world of concepts:

DinoSawUs Mirror Mirror

Steampunked mirror!

This particular design is where the players will get to choose their avatar.

Another concept for a window for picking an avatar:

And some of my awesome concepts:

Character Incubator!

This is a post-login screen where the kids can pick their own character.
After several hours of discussing + talking nonsense, this is what we decided upon:


Where it all started:

Avatar - Character Parasaurolophus

This unpronounceable dinosaur was the last of the 5 characters I chose to design.
I'm not convinced of this dino's "coolness" but the boys seem to like it (maybe it's his shiny face), so I guess I did an alright job.


Profile:

And as always, concept drawings for some kicks!

Avatar - Character Stegosaurus

I find it difficult to give the stegosaurus any kind of vivid personality.
So here is another "nice" character.



Time for some concept drawings! (audience = woohoo!)

Avatar - Triceratops character

For those of you who know me well enough, my choice of colour for this character probably shocked you. But look at her. Awww isn't she cute.
And before you continue to call me a hypocrite for using this colour scheme, it's violet. Not pink.




Concept drawings:

Avatar - Brachiosaurus character

Animated gif:

A new character to join the orange T-Rex.
A friend of mine had suggested to extend the length of his neck a little. And I have exaggerated the way his neck sways in action, so he's easy to identify.


And here are the exciting concept drawings. These could be used if we were to build a parody game - DinoSawUs Zombies

Avatar - character

Our final sexy rexy!:

This is the awesome character that's going to roam the prehistoric earth! - or at least one of them anyway.
Animated:


It is NEVER easy to create a character from scratch.
So here are some working drawings so show the painful progress: