Fossils#1: The Designs - HD (Patreon)

The "Fossils" short will star Kati the grump cat and Pingo the happy dog: a classic odd couple, buddy buddy type of dynamic. The short will follow the two in a quest to find dinosaur bones. One wants to dig, the other wants to eat!

(read the full post here)

I dropped my focus on producing shorts in early 2020 to do something else. Now that I've picked it up with a fresh POV, I changed some designs a bit. Pingo is now more colorful with blue and white fur. He's now wearing khaki shorts, to make the color match more with his appearance. Also his ears are floating, haha. Kati stayed the same, except now she's more grumpy and has kind of pointy hair.

The setting will be a wide Grand Canyon-ish landscape, inspired by the paintings of Maurice Noble (or at least, that's what I'll try to make it look like, heehee). I was planning to the make shorts in a 4:3 aspect ratio, like old cartoons shown on boxy old TV screens. I feel like it makes you focus on the characters' actions more (and it's good for watching on an iPad too!)

The visual development above shows the wide, 2:1 aspect ratio because I wanna see how it might actually look. I like it so far, but it might work better with the more epic BG or something that feels more cinematic. So I asked my BF Ginkgosan to try painting the BG and voilà! Suddenly it's a movie! Haha. I'm gonna keep that and use it in future shorts.

PSD/Clip studio files and time-lapse video are available in PSD post

Feel free to comment, and see you in next week's post! Gonna be about video, music and storyboard!

- Piti Yindee