'The Big Red': Concepts

'The Big Red'

Concepts:

The good thing about the story change is that it used only one environment and it was one of the ones which I had put some time into - the cathedral. Although the cathedral was the least finished of all the environments it was still something which was already built.

My main task now as to try and populate the scene with various bits of machinery and create a kind of 'hub' or central area where the inventors would do most of their work. Below are various concepts I came up with for the different machines:

(Above) The activation button. This is the machine on which has the main activation switch for the great invention the two characters have just finished making. I tried to keep it simple on the top of the machine as any kind of clutter will draw the viewer's attention away from the button itself.

(Above) The terminal. This machine is supposed to be the power terminal for the activation of the button machine. I designed it to be cluttered with a lot of gauges and pipes everywhere trying to make it look as asymmetrical as possible but also give it the appearance of some kind of connection 'hub'.

(Above) These were just some general machine designs. Their purpose wouldn't matter in the animation too much so they were there just to add mode to the space.

(Above) Tese were all concepts for a plug machine. We have a cleaner in the animation who is going around with a floor buffwe while the two inventors argue with each other. In one of the scenes she unplugs the main machine that the inventors are trying to power up in order to plug her own floor buffer into.  

With all of the above concepts I started off with a few initial designs. The rest of the design ideas for each machine usually used aspects of the first two concept drawings. I find this way of working very helpful because I can come up with the initial ideas relatively fast and from then on it is just a matter of combining the right bits from each design in order to arrive to a final one.