Flower Story
As director of my final major project at university, I’m responsible for bringing my vision to life. I feel like that means I should do the pre-production, as I feel that only I can really show to my team what’s in my head. So here are some early to mid level pieces of my upcoming animation, hope you enjoy them 🙂
Environment
The first painting I did for the initial pitch. Completely different environment but I wanted to get across the colourful and vibrant feel of the garden.
Still from an early animatic.
Initial environment concepts, progressing with time. All had to be done quickly so I had to force myself to be bold with the brushstrokes.
The final environment painting. This is how I want the environment to look – saturated and lively. Plenty to look at and take in, hopefully it feels alive.
Key Moment Concepts
Early paintings for crucial parts of the film – a change in mood in each one.
Colour Concepts
A few of the colour concepts. These had to be done very quicky and simply to give the lighter an idea of the colour palette and mood for some shots. I’d love to work more into these, but have to move forward in production.
Character Designs
Final character design for the dandelion character – a goofy, shy character who becomes smitten with the rose character. He is a little lonely and offbeat in the garden, as nobody wants to be friends with a weed.
Some of the rose studies – using reference I needed to get a feel for painting roses before I could accurately paint on with character.
Early concepts – trying to figure out which kind of rose was best, and the character she portrayed seemed too generic and ‘pretty’.
Final character design for the rose. We wanted to avoid the use of a rose as the female flower, but realised that most other candidates were trickier to place this kind of face onto, and less human in appearance. Roses actually do look quite human with their ‘hand’ leaves and round heads. She’s pretty, but not overly sexualised, and we wanted to make her read clearly and simply.
adriancathie.com 
Hi Adrian! I’m an undergrad student and I’m looking to try to enter the freelance motion graphic business. I was looking up inspiration for characters, and I came across the final version of your rose character. I instantly fell in love with it! I’m going to be making a short 2D animated film/demo reel in After Effects to show potential clients, and I was wondering if I could recreate your flower character in Adobe Illustrator with some small variations. The story will follow the flower character as it dances ballet-style to Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from his Nutcracker ballet. Obviously, I would give you credit and link your blog as well as any other info you’d like included. I don’t have much experience with character design so it would be tremendously useful if I could use you art. If you would like compensation, I can do that, but I can’t offer very much as I am in college, financially independent, and only working at Walmart. If you’d be uncomfortable with my use of your art, no problem! Just let me know what works for you!
LikeLike
Hey Josh! That all sounds perfectly fine, am very flattered that you enjoyed my rose design and I’m very happy for you to use it for your project. Credit would be great and there’s no need for compensation. I’d love to see a link of your finished project when it’s done! Motion graphics is a great field to get into as there’s always a high demand for that skillset. Good luck out there! – Adrian
LikeLike
I really appreciate this! I’ll be sure to send you the link when I wrap up. What would like me to include in the credits? I could link your blog or provide contact info etc.? Let me know what sounds good. Thanks again!
LikeLike
Happy to help! As for credit, just my name ‘Adrian Cathie’ and a link to my website (www.adriancathie.com) would be perfect. Cheers!
LikeLike