Environment

Here are all the drawings I drew based on the images from the research. Those drawings, however, aren't positioned exactly the same as they will be in the final aniamtion. They will be in different layers and the will move across the screen.

Research 2

In order to create believable environment I've looked at a lot of pictures with Japanese stuff. I don't want to leave anything unchecked and risk that something might look like something from completely different part of the world. I want the viewer to know that my part of the animation is happening in Japan just by looking at it for a few seconds.

Here are some imageses I've used to create backgrounds and other items:

Character Design

Here are my final character designs. I've made them on Maya, so they are 3D. The colour of the male character is black with white dots, just like we've decided during the group meeting. The female character is white with black dots. I've decided to use that colours based on the research about Japanese weddings, where brides are dressed white. I have also managed to rig the characters. So now I'll be able to move them more easily and believably much quicker than I would do if the characters were in 2D.

Here are few renders of my characters in different positions:

Animatics

I've done animatics to see the overall flow of my animation. I wanted to see how my idea of mostly moving backgrounds will look. Doing animatics also helped me to spot some problems I'll possibly meet while doing the final animation. I'm quite happy with moving the backgrounds rather than characters. However, I'm not happy that my characters are 2D. This is because sometimes they will need to turn around and while they are doing it, you can see that they are flat. I've tried to change the sizes of my characters into negative numbers. It looks better but the flick is still visible. So I think I'll do the characters in 3D and then import them into After Effects. One more problem I came across is the wall when the characters are entering the restaurant. It's not visible in the animatics, because I've cut it into three separate scenes. But in the final animation, where everything will be one long scene, this will become much bigger issue. The problem with the wall is the same as with the characters, it's 2D. And when it will move across the screen I will either loose the depth of my scene or show that the wall is in fact flat. So I think I will also do the wall in 3D.

Here are three scenes of animatics.