[Ork]

Here's a pencil rough [plus some Photoshop coloring] of Bill with an Ork on his shoulders. If Bill can carry an Ork, but the Ork's tail can whip up a typhoon [or a typhoon wanna-be] you can see how the notion of the ever-expanding tail came about, and my initial characterization: that an Ork in flight looks like a 55 gal. drum with a canary at the front.

[Gloria]

So I wonder again (not really expecting an answer as I asked in another thread): Should the character, set design pay attention to future problems? Or is it still Silver Back Gorilla bluff charge mode?

 

Basically I'd say 'no', since we don't even know if there will be a future. Let the future designers look back at what we did today...and deal with it.

 

Design of Pon? I'd say it doesn't make any difference what he looks like. We know already that Gloria is hopelessly in love [and there's no rational accounting for the ways of a young girls heart.] The love-spell striking them at the end is superfluous. We need only spike the guns of Googly-Goo. Pon can be anything we want.

 

Are you familiar with the paintings of James Christiansen? Looking at the postings on your website, I see you two as kindred spirits.

[Ork]

Another consideration for the Orc. It has to be able to ride on Capt'n Bills shoulders without looking too terribly unnatural.

 

Here's [i hope] a more disdainful, supercilious Ork...pontificating of the natural superiority of Orks...which, I guess, they do a lot.

 

I'll do a rough of Bill packing an Ork on his shoulders for tomorrow.

[Witch]

OK. New witch. This is for you Nancy. You want 'fem'...howzzis?

 

This witch sees herself as devastatingly attractive, witty and a perpetual ray of sunshine. In fact, she's unctous, bombastic, cloying, syrupy sweet, back-biting and cruel. She sees herself as stylish. In fact, she's over-dressed and over-bearing. She thinks she's warm and supportive, but really just gushy, flattering and patronizing while she probes for a person's weak points.

 

She is always in the midst of a swarm of butterflies. In reality, they are nasty little familiars, somewhere between a bat and a very fat mosquito. She might mumble darkly under her breath and point at one, whereupon it transforms and flys away on her errand.

 

She wears an artsy-fartsy braided belt festooned with pockets and pouches. Some contain simple everyday items like money and cosmetics, but most hold potions, powders, philtres, poisons, [an occasional panecea] notions, nostrums, vials of vile, balloons of bat breath, and other witchly tools.

 

When she enters a room, men become very interested in the wallpaper and children cringe behind mother. Flowers wilt as she passes. A meeting with Gloria should be interesting.

 

Thanks Ken and Holmes for the notes on Pessim. I'll download the new script, but it doesnt sound like he's a candidate for the 'boiler hat' unless he has a very volcanic temperment.

[Cap'n Bill]

Aye, That be Capt'n Bill.

 

Sigh. I was afraid you'd say that [LOL]

[Witch]

Pessim (in the original) is the first guy the group meet on the isolated island. He complains about water being too wet and is never happy.

 

Thanks, Ken. Is there a verbal description out there, or an illustrated starting point that I can take a look ?

[Ork]

...looks like its tail was a cross between a turkey and some kind of slinky made up of suction cups!

 

Spin all that very quickly and you have a pretty good summation of how the tail works.

 

Arrogant? Let me see what I can do.

 

....and would you believe? They've not seen fit to release "We're Back" on DVD! I'll have to blow the cobwebs out of the VCR and see it again.

[Witch]

Well...yeah. I too feel that witch needs work. The hat is the best part. I'll push around some more paper. See what you can do with her.

 

Who, by the way, is Pessim? I don't see him in the Synopsis Martin sent. I went to the TWO part of the site and did a Search: nothing. Found the Cast of Characters...still no Pessim.

[Cap'n Bill]

OK, here's a new Bill.

[Grasshopper]

Should/Does he have wings?

 

I think so. He has to fly out the window after the witch does him. And he may be lofting a water bucket at the end.

[Gloria]

I'm liking the No.1 Gloria...top row, left.

 

I've always seen Gloria as an airy-fairy sort of girl whose feet barely touch the floor when she moves. [affectionate and good-hearted, but...] I gave her the simple Grecian sheath dress as a counterpoint to the masses of flowers which are her passion and principle affectation. Every time she re-appears, the flowers are completely different.

 

But Gloria AS a flower? Now that's something!

[Trot]

How 'bout if we include the pact-with-the-devil thing in an upcoming cartoon with a deep south Delta Blues theme.

Capt'n Bill is an old voodoo doctor who plays blues guitar and Trot is a young cotton picker with a dream to make it big in New York?

 

I'm in!

[Cap'n Bill]

It seems Capt'n Bill's sketches show him as too refined.

 

Yup. And on purpose. I did it because I tend to resist the 'hick', the 'rube' as an over-used cliche'. But I'll work up another series of draweings that show him closer to the Baum book illustrations.

[Grasshopper]

Was just thinking: His torso and forelegs should be whatever color Bill's coat was, and his rear legs, the color of Bill's pants.

[Ork]

Those are good looking crows, Kel.

 

CROWS? Wait 'til you see the crows! [LOL]

 

Holmes: The tail feathers ARE a nested series of 'helicopter' blades. Looking back on my comments, I see that I was not clear. But where a helicopter has four or five long, thin blades, the Ork has perhaps twenty or so on each fan. Like a jet turbine. I see us using transparency maps, and bump maps to detail the feathers.

 

I like Alain's Ork too. I'd have no problem with grafting it onto this tail system. What I was trying to solve here was getting to a tail that could [believably] whip up a storm of tornado proportions. I don't see how Alain's serpentine tail could do that, and I don't see how we could rotate it fast enough in A:M to make it appear as a horrific blur. The Baum book cover has a simple propellar [which Disney retained] but it seems more suited to an outboard motor than a flying disaster machine.

 

Speaking of crows: does anyone remember the animated cartoon "We're Back!" where the Walter Cronkite character [Professor New Eyes] has an evil twin [Professor Screw Eyes] who is always attended by a phalanx of sinister crows? Now there was some crows! [i'll have to watch that again.]

[Witch]

Cool. Your designs are really rooted in the "steam age". Which could be appropriate for the era the story was written in. I'm kind of torn though.....the green skinned witch in the movie was very iconic.

 

Thanks, Ken. I hadn't thought of 'steam age' in this context, but, yes, you're right. When drawing, I find myself veering away from anything that I feel L.Frank Baum would not recognize. Hence the balloons, which he would, and even the Zeppelins. Baum died in 1919.

 

The push rods on the glasses adjust the distance from her face, and lift up and down. The witch can look around without turning her head. The whole cylindrical section that holds the glasses rotates a full 360 and [ if we go with this version] should be moving often, checking on what's happening. Evil plotters are always on the alert for evil plots.

 

I see the amount of steam/smoke coming from the hat as the indicator of her moods. When sparks and cinders start boiling out, she's about to blow. The fumes could be noxious. In a bad mood, the witch could clear a room just by arriving.

 

And green? Green is good. How about with a speckled, spotted pattern?

[Help! I blew off my toolbar...]

Again, take a gooood look around in the inerface to see any sliver and/or press buttons and see if you can recover the toolbar. Go crazy...

 

TRN: you were right all along. It was there...a mere sliver. The sliver was just more mere than I thought possible, and thus didn't see it. My computer guy came over today and tried several approaches. At last he set the resolution of the monirtors as high as possible so the image area took up as small an area of the screen as possible. And there was the menu...in full sight.

 

The little bitty grey line that the red arrow is pointing to was all that was showing originally.

[King Krewl]

Oh wow. That will reduce the facial rigging/animation alot! I'm liking them already. Perhaps color could also be involved in their ranking. Kind of like Star Trek.

 

Good point. I'll ginn up a 'mesh-sketch' for us to take a look at.

[Googly-Goo]

great drawings, characters Kelley - both Googly & Krewel

 

Thanks, Nancy. Googly-Goo was the most fun of all so far, followed by Krewl.

[Iron grating (splng?)]

Nice grate, but Blackjack's corners are all rounded. I think that made the difference. I too, thought of making an elongated cube and replicating them. But I don't think that's what B.D. was shooting for.

[King Krewl]

Since there is not a seperate category for the Palace guard, I'll insert them here. The Guard have various crests on their helmets denoting rank: these two being a basic PFC Grunt, and a 1st Sargent. Captains, Majors and Generals get more elaborate helms. [more on that later]

 

Usually, the eyes are not seen, unless they are pointedly peering at you. The hole in the helmet flexes with the eye expression like the eyes/windshields in Pixars "Cars".

[Ork]

The Ork was one of the first characters that I had a solution for, but the hardest to draw. I ended up building a hasty "mesh-sketch" in A:M to show how the tail works.

[Witch]

The witch.

[Grasshopper]

Bill as a grasshopper...

[Googly-Goo]

Googly-Goo. At last. I originally saw him as so rich that gems and coins kept spilling from his pockets. His coterie of little minions run around retreiving them, to the distress of King Krewl who hopes that the items will roll under a chair, or some such, and lie unnoticed until he, in his avarice, can collect them. The minions are arrogant, self-important, egotistical little toadies who hover about trying to attract Googly-Goo's attention to their special service. They jostle and trip each other behind his back. When it gets to be too much, he thumps the floor with his walking staff, which puts them on notice. The dangling gems became another way of displaying wealth, and perhaps they can be the objects that keep falling off. If they were seperate Objects, with a 'dangle' Action, he could be in constant motion.