Class of 2012 DVD Menu

Jake and Judy, from Box Forts, and Chip and Flint, from Flower Story.

This is the image you'll be greeted when watching if you purchased a DVD at the UCF Visual Language Premiere tonight (https://www.facebook.com/events/370831486278430/). Both animated shorts Box Forts and Flower Story, along with some extra content, are being offered for a small donation that goes towards the funding of our program.

Flower Story DVD Menu

Flower Story main menu image

Submenu image

Flower Story's Flower Design

I was mostly in charge of design for the Flower Story flower and it's seed. This was a tough job. We wanted a flower that looked exotic, but not completely alien looking, something mystifying and elegant. 

Because our movie revolved around a variety of Celtic motifs, tri-s and knots played a part in it's design as well.

Early Flower Story Environment

Originally when Flower Story was first conceptualized it was in an abandoned yet still lush looking forest. Above was a quick painting I did prior to our environment exploration outside of a forest and green environment.

 These are a few sketch paintings I did for the "Island Team" which I was a part of to get an idea of how would "Flower Story" be like if we had relocated from the forest to a desolate, rocky beach.

And thumbnail sketches of the island environment.

Early Flower Story Character Development

 So during the first month of my time in the Visual Language program (now being called simply the Animation program), me and a small team of 3 other guys had to expand upon a story we chose in class. As part of the assignment, we also started sketching out ideas of how our characters would look.

Our team, which changed from simply "Untitled Story", to "Flower Story", to the short-lived "Life's a bloom" later on, and back to simply "Flower Story", knew from the get-go we wanted charming little rock creatures. These are some early sketches for the original 5 characters we wished to include in our short.

 Eventually, the "twins" got nixed entirely, and the "big guy" and "middle guy" (labeled as the leader above) eventually morphed into what would be just Flint, and the "little guy" into Chip.

We went through a stage of a complete visual overhaul on the characters and made maquettes from the resulting sketches. Above was my revised version of Chip, still not quite the Chip in our movie.