Jolly Rogers (Group Game project)

One of our projects consisted of forming groups and creating a concept for a mobile app or game and our group decided on a pirate themed RPG pixel game.

All work for this joint project can be found over at - http://teamthoticus.tumblr.com/

Plastic Oceans development

When we were given the task to create an animation for a charity I immediately knew I wanted to work with an animal or ocean charity. After some looking I was torn between two charities: Plastic Oceans and WDC, so to help decide i created a concept and mood board for both options; in the end deciding to go with my favourite idea which was that for Plastic Oceans.

Concept:

A sea lion journeys through a plastic riddled ocean trying to find the rest of its colony. As it travels through these oceanic landscapes it passes a variety of other sea creatures but they are all made entirely of plastic. As the animation progresses our sea lion begins to slow as it becomes more like its surroundings before turning entirely plastic itself and sinking to the depths.

MoodBoard -

Storyboards -

 These storyboards show the journey that our main sea lion makes, through many different sea-scapes and past a multitude of plastic creatures before finally finding another sea lion, but it was too late and it has already turned to plastic. Our main sea lion then collapses beside it and the camera pulls out to show the two on a huge pile of plastic waste. 

Sea Creature Concept Art -

All the creatures in this film save for the main sea lion will be made from a variety of different plastic products such as: Jellyfish plastic bags, Pipe Eels, a Milk bottle whale and a plastic bottle sea lion.

Digital Idea Mock Up -

After having my concept and storyboards done I proceeded to make a digital piece in Photoshop to try and visualise how I wanted the final film to look. I quite enjoy how this test turned out and it has a visible difference in style between the two main factors of the sea lion and the plastic environment.

I initially had a different idea when it came to animating this film as I was planning to create and animate the seal in Maya as a 3D model but after creating the model I began running into issues with the rigging so I decided to scrap that direction and chose to create it all using Photoshop and After effects instead.  

Scrapped Model

11 Second Club (October 2018)

11 second club (October 2018) from Abbey Armstrong on Vimeo.

This is my entry for October 2018's 11 second club, which finished in 19th place http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/october18/entry/7klR3k. 

   

The live brief that I decided to produce work for was the 11 Second Club. The audio clip for the competition that month was as follows:

MAN 1- “oh, this is… pleasant. You could feel the history coming from the walls in here.”

MAN 2- “Yeah, isn’t that wonderful?”

MAN 1- “Not when the history fights back!”

My idea for this clip was to have two characters walking down a dimly lit corridor in an old building such as a castle with suits of armour lining both sides of the thin passageway. Focus will be on the first man as he speaks, then following his flashlight around the room. The second man then walks past the first, over to a suit of armour when he speaks then raises a hand to knock on the suit’s helmet which falls to the floor with a clang. The next scene shows the two men surrounded by the suits of armour with their weapons drawn as the first man speaks his last line.

I had planned to produce this animation in Maya, using the character resources the 11 second club provides but after more consideration I changed my mind and chose to produce it as a digital 2D animation using Photoshop. Creating the other assets such as the armour and the surrounding corridor would be quite a time consuming process and I believe I would have missed the deadline.

Inspirations for my visuals came from a location in Resident Evil 4 for the corridor and for the characters I just based them on themselves (The ones in the audio clip) as i'm a fan of theirs.

Resident Evil 4

Shane Madej & Ryan Bergara (Buzzfeed Unsolved)

After I had my proposal done and visuals in mind I went on to create the storyboards and then begin animating as there wasn't much time for this live brief.

In the end I am pleased with how it looks visually as most of my animations up until this point haven't been coloured and i'm pleasantly surprised that I finished in the top 20, but if I were to do this again I would defiantly focus more on the frames themselves rather than the visuals as the movements are quite limited.

"Do you want FRIGHTS with that?" - Storyboard and Animatic

Storyboards for Ep 11- The LIA Incident

Animatic-

"Do you want FRIGHTS with that?" - Animatic from Abbey Armstrong on Vimeo.

Episode Script

Ep 11- LIA

Opening shot is an areal view of the diner getting closer before reaching the inside to reveal an empty diner save for Charlie, Kayla and the Regulars. All of them are at the far side of the diner gathered around Mangus as he wildly tells a story of one of his most recent schemes save for Drew who is happily cleaning the kitchen. His storytelling is very full of energy as he manoeuvres himself around in big sweeping motions as though reliving his memories.

MANGUS:

“So, there I was on that stage, ‘The man with no skin’, a huge crowd of shmucks gawking at me, throwing money me way. It was great lemme tell ya. But that’s when I notice that some of these idiots think they can get away with being stingy, not throwing so much as a penny me way. Now I know that I’m a humble man”-

Everyone rolls their eyes or makes a face at this and Drew makes his way over to listen intently too.

MANGUS:

- “But I certainly ain’t no charity son. So that’s when me brilliant mind hatched a plan to get what I deserve. With the grace of warrior, I reach me arm up and pull off me head in one fell swoop. That certainly left ‘em speechless let me tell ya, that is until I let out a mighty roar and they all fainted right then and there. It was truly a sight to behold. Then I lept off the stage and collected from them what they owed me, wallets an’ all.”

At this his pulls out a random wallet which opens and 12 family photos fall out to which Charlie and Delano look at in disbelief, though the latter with less surprise. Rivet falls into a full-bodied chuckle and slaps the skeleton on the back who then drops the wallet and Drew grabs it, happily inspecting all the images inside.  

CHARLIE:

“Yeeaaah, I believe that’s called stealing.”

Mangus straightens himself back up after that hearty slap, as Rivet regains her composure as the laugh begins to simmer out.

MANGUS

“Nah lad, not if it was me rightful money, if anything they were the ones stealing from me.”

CHARLIE:

“Sureeee…”

Mangus stands up and snatches the wallet back from the fascinated Zombie

MANGUS:

“But It’s a shame I’ll never work the circus route again… I need more wallets for all me cash.”

At this Charlie leaves the conversation and walks away to go check through the cash register.

KAYLA:

“Huh, I was wondering what you were up to yesterday.”

Mangus opens the wallet in his hands again to take out and count through his acquired cash, which all happens to be Scottish currency instead of US dollars.

KAYLA:

“Wait, how come those aren’t dollars? You couldn’t have exchanged them already.”

MANGUS:

“To be honest, I ain’t frankly sure, all money I own seems to turn to me homeland’s tender.”

KAYLA:

“Huh… That sounds like quite a curse, man.”

MANGUS:

“Curse? Nah lass, if anything it’s a miracle. It makes it all the easier for me to turn all these horrible green notes of yours into something of actual value.”

In the background Charlie looks over worryingly and takes out a key and locks the cash register. Just as he finishes that, a bell alerts everyone to the diner door opening and a man walking in. The stranger is very tall with bright red hair and a long matching beard, and wearing a long beige trench coat. Without so much as a glance in the direction of the others he takes a seat in one of the booths near the door and picks up the menu, blocking his face from view. Everyone sits in silence for a moment whilst glancing over at the man, each with a different level of discreteness. The man, although appearing and acting pretty shady, seems out of place in the diner as he still appears too normal, too human. The only thing that makes us think overwise is how at ease he is here and his lack of reaction upon seeing the oddities in the room. The group starts to converse in hushed tones save for Drew and Mangus who continue to stare, the former with worry and the latter with narrowed eyes.

Episode Ideas

Wet Floor- 

A customer earlier in the day speaks out his very complex and specific order which happens to be a summoning ritual for an ancient and troublesome spirit which latches onto the diner. Later on, Mr Zhao is finishing up his work one day nearly at the end of his shift doing some cleaning in the bathrooms. The diner is empty as he’s finishing up, about to leave and lock up, some strange things start to happen; First it starts with the lights flickering, faint noises and the temperature dropping. Engrossed in his work he doesn’t notice anything as strange until he looks up at a stall door he had just cleaned and sees some fresh graffiti across it. Confused, he wipes it off without reading it and turns to pick up his equipment, as he turns back around the graffiti is back again. This cycle of him washing it off and new graffiti appearing somewhere else continues, with him growing more annoyed and paranoid with each wipe. This eventually ends upon him finally reading the graffiti which happens to be an equally annoyed message addressed to him. More notes appear before his eyes before the final one simply says “behind you”. Upon turning he is face to face with an angry spirit and squirts some of his holy water at it before turning tail and booking it out of there. That is until he leaves the bathroom and is face to face with the wet floor sign he placed there earlier. A stickler for the rules he stops running and walks at a safe pace as to not slip whilst panicking, during this time the room grows dark behind him as the spirit draws near until eventually reaching him. When Charlie arrives for his shift and finds Mr Zhao still there he is shocked and tries to get the janitor to leave before the others arrive but the other refuses. Whilst Charlie is getting ready for customers he notices Zhao shift between cleaning like his usual shelf to acting creepy and lurking just out the corner of his sight as his conscience and the spirit fight over control of his body. This behaviour only worsens when the others arrive and everybody agrees that something is definitely wrong. Things all come to light when he becomes aggressive and starts to use inhuman powers and they realise he must be possessed. They then spilt up with Rivet, Delano and Mangus trying to subdue him whilst Charlie, Kayla and Drew look for items they need to perform an exorcism. Once all items are collected and the diner a mess, Kayla begins the exorcism on the downed janitor and banishes the spirit from his body, leaving an unconscious Mr Zhao. As he begins to wake up Charlie takes him outside to the front door and then walks up to the diner just as Zhao fully awakens and acts as if he were just starting his shift now and Zhao must have taken a nap after leaving. The janitor seems to buy this story and then stumbles home and goes straight to bed, forgetting most of the events of that night.   

Halloween episode- 

Loreta drops by the diner one night as she finally follows up to all of Charlie’s frantic babblings of the supernatural from when he first started. Unfortunately, the date happens to be on the Halloween weekend so by the time she arrives there, both people in costumes and actual monsters are in but it’s impossible to distinguish between the two. She is clearly unimpressed and thinks that these people in costume must just be coming in every night, or Charlie just set it up, and gives him some harsh words before leaving. The actual monsters there are unimpressed and feel like these costumed humans are making fun of them, and they label them all as “Deadist”. Charlie and Kayla try to calm down the livid monsters and get the costumed patrons to leave. It all starts to get out of hand but then some of the costumed teens compliment the monsters on their great outfits and how they’ve chosen great characters to go as. This takes them off guard and their attitudes completely shift as they end up loving all the attention. Just as it seems everything is fine, the clouds outside part revealing a full moon and Rivet starts to change to her huge bear form and lets out a massive roar, which more than startles the other customers and they all run from the diner. Those customers come back the next day in the morning and leaves a tip with the manager for Charlie for the great service the night before and the coolest Halloween prank they have ever experienced.

Out of Order-

A vampire hunter is in town looking for Delano and has tracked him down to the diner. He bursts in guns blazing and begins stalking over to him before Rivet and Mangus block the hunter’s path. Both parties involved are about to get violent before Kayla jumps between them trying to explain to the hunter that Delano isn’t a threat to anyone, and would never hurt a fly. After Charlie and Ava burst from the back room and she runs into Delano’s arms, and the hunter eventually backs down but before leaving, issues a stern threat that if he ever becomes a problem he won’t hesitate to put him down. After that ordeal everyone winds down and everything goes back to normal, that is until the slushy machine breaks down and Delano starts to have withdrawal symptoms and starts to lose himself as his natural thirst for blood comes back in full swing and he becomes a danger to the others. They try to contain him but he quickly escapes from the diner and makes a run for it into town in search of that hunter, to put an end to him. The others run after him (Ava included) but quickly lose sight and have to split up whilst Drew and Charlie stay in the diner to try and fix the machine. They eventually get the machine and Charlie grabs a drink and quickly runs into town in search of the others, during this time Ava has wandered off from Rivet and located Delano and the hunter in an alleyway fighting each other. Just as Delano was going to bite the other she jumps in and shakes him, instead of lunging at her he seems to regain some control of himself and jumps back from her and the dazed hunter. Charlie manages to meet up with the other three in town, none of which have caught sight of Delano or Ava yet, that is until they hear a commotion from a nearby alley and run over. They’re greeted to the sight of the hunter using Ava as a hostage and stalking forward with a wooden steak, upon the others arriving Ava kicks the hunter casing him to drop her which sets off a flurry of action from everyone as; Rivet tackles the stunned hunter, Charlie runs up to his sister whilst Kayla takes the slushy and Mangus grabs onto Delano so she can give him the drink. After everyone calms down and some threats for the hunter to leave town have been made they all head back to the diner, and make sure to always have a replacement machine in the back room.

Mirror Mirror-

Loreta buys an antique mirror from a shady yard sale for the diner to spruce up the place. When Charlie starts his shift with Drew there he hears sounds/ whispers coming from somewhere in the diner and goes to investigate. He follows the sounds finally to the mirror and gazes into it intently and suddenly sees some movement behind him. He quickly turns around and the mirror falls on him (and smashes?). He jumps at the noise and looks down to find himself standing in the empty mirror frame (with no mirror shards anywhere). He goes to rub his head but pulls it back confused as there’s no pain there from where the mirror clearly must have collided with his head. At this he then takes his first real look around and notes that nothing seems strange so places the frame back and gets back to work. When the others start to come in they are all off, like reversed versions of themselves. Then he starts to panic. Meanwhile back in the original world Drew rushed over as the mirror fell but it smashed and Charlie was gone by the time he got there. As the others come in he’s desperately trying to collect all the mirror pieces and put them back together and explain what happened with no-one understanding his outbursts of panicked “BUUR” and “GERR”. As things start to get bad in the other world they eventually complete the mirror and Charlie is brought back through to the normal world.

Tour Group from Hell - 

 A group of avid cryptid hunters come to the diner as it’s rumoured to be a supernatural hot-spot. Charlie and Kayla act like they have no idea what the group are talking about whilst the others are hiding in the back out of sight. Those in the back room begin to get restless and leave via the backdoor to do some people-watching of the tour group though the diners windows. Charlie and Kayla notice the others outside and try to signal them to get away from here without appearing suspicious to the tour group, and it seems to be going pretty well until Drew bumps into one of their cars and sets off the alarm causing the whole group to jump up and see a group of figures running into the woods from the parking lot. The two teens try to convince them that they were probably just a group of drunks but the cryptid hunters are already running out the doors and in the direction that the figures went. What follows are the two groups wandering through the woods looking out for each other but always just off getting solid proof of the other group. The monsters eventually get sick of creeping around the woods from a group of obsessive humans and just want to be able to go back to the diner so they instead come up with a plan to scare the other group away from this place so they split up and put their plan into action. Each member takes a different position around the group and takes turns making noises and running between bushes out the corner of everyone’s eyes until at last Mangus drops down from a branch with a rope around his neck in front of the crowd for the final scare. As this time Charlie and Kayla had locked up the diner and were finally running out to the woods to try and disperse whatever situation they had on their hands, that was until the tour group all came bounding out the treeline past them and straight towards their vehicles and instantly sped away. The two dumbfounded teens look back towards the treeline to see the four others walking towards them looking triumphant. Charlie doesn’t question it and just goes back to open up the diner.

   

The LIA incident- 

A 6-foot-tall man with red hair and a long beard to match comes in wearing an oversized trench coat who looks too normal and out of place here, but his ease amongst the other oddities tells otherwise. A few minutes pass before Charlie goes over to his table to take his order but upon reaching his table the man suddenly jumps up holding out a badge shouting that is part of the LIA (Leprechaun intelligence agency) and for everyone to stay where they are and at this a bunch of other agents burst in the diner all wearing suits and only 3ft tall. They announce that they are here to investigate the main suspects for their current case, said suspects being everyone in the diner. The main operative on the stilts explains that the crime they’re investigating is a series of raids on their sacred 4 leaf clover fields. Everybody instantly suspects Mangus because he’s Mangus but after a series of individual interrogations without anybody seeming to know anything, everyone is at a loss. The agents start to get annoyed and still convinced it’s Mangus they tell him to just confess already but the skeleton remains adamant he had nothing to do with “stealing any stupid leaves”, which sets off a violent reaction from the leprechauns and a big comical fight breaks out (“Stupid Leaves? The only stupid thing I see here is that dress you’re wearing!” “This is a kilt, you overgrown lawn gnome!”). The fist fighting and name calling all suddenly comes to a halt at the sight of Pickle (Drew’s chipmunk) coming in from outside with a bunch of 4 leaf clovers in his mouth and scurrying over to Drew’s shoulder and placing them in his hair. At a loss for words and saddened over the fact that they cannot arrest a chipmunk they all leave the diner, defeated, to go and chipmunk proof their precious clover fields.

TV Show Locations

I created all my locations in the sims 4 as I was struggling to visualise the floor plan of my areas in my head. After I created my locations I then took some screenshots and took them into Photoshop and painted over them.    

Diner Exterior- 

Below is the floor plan of the diner I got from an Ariel view screenshot

Diner Interior-

Managers office-

Charlie's House-

 Charlie's Room-

 Ava's Room-

Height Chart

Character Bio's, Turn Arounds and Expressions

 Charlie-

17-Year-old senior at high school studying physics and the protagonist of this series. With the upcoming prospect of paying for University and his family’s recent financial troubles, Charlie desperately searched around his town for work. After seeming to apply to every available business in town and not hearing anything back he began to panic, that is until he stumbled across a secluded diner at the edge of town he didn’t know existed and upon enquiring, was hired on the spot. The job consisted of a 6-day week, only working the night shifts and had a yearlong contract that he couldn’t back out of. It all seemed pretty intense and a tad shady but he was desperate, so accepted.

Personality- Polite, Helpful, Ambitious, Hard-worker, Scaredy-cat, Anxious, sarcastic  

•          Is always tired and just wants to sleep
•          Heavily reliant on his love- coffee, but is always jittery because of it. 
•          Is a very logical person and hates/ fears things that go against it (and the laws of physics)
•          Loves science and space
•          Straight A student. Believes in brain over brawn
•          Nerdy

Kayla-

 17-Year-old senior at high school studying fine art and Charlie’s best friend. Kayla has known Charlie since they were both kids and have been best friends for most of their lives. She has trouble sleeping so has taken up the catchphrase “Sleep is for the weak”. Normally when she can’t sleep she just sketches or browses creepy supernatural stuff on the internet but upon hearing Charlie got the night shift at a diner she was ecstatic to hear the two of them could hang out more, and the prospect of greasy food was just the icing on the cake.

Personality- Laid back, jokester, free spirit, cool, creative

•          Insomniac – “Sleep is for the weak”
•          Loves greasy food, especially burgers
•          Stressed so hard in the past that she is now an emotionless husk
•          Cryptid lover (fascinated by the supernatural)
•          Always has a sketchbook with her
•          Cool Dork

Ava-

Charlie’s 6-year-old younger sister who he occasionally has to bring to work whenever his mother works nights. She is the sweetest and most well-behaved child you’ve ever met but if you hurt her brother she won’t hesitate to attack you. She has eyes for adventure and an unquenchable curiosity so has a habit of wandering off on her own and getting into trouble. Her best friend is a stuffed bear with glasses called “Professor Franklin” and they go everywhere together.

Personality- Adventurous, Curious, Fearless, Imaginative, charming, Happy, Bubbly 

•          Has no fear
•          Loves animals and nature
•          Can lighten up any room
•          No adults are immune to her cuteness

Drew-

A former employee at the diner who died on the night shift just under a year ago by choking on a burger, but now he returns every night to continue to work his shifts as a zombie. Since emerging from his grave as his zombified self, his vocabulary has been limited to the word “Burger” and occasionally other items from the diner menu. With his limited verbal communication with humans he seemed to gain the power to understand and get along with animals as a trade off, and because of this has a pet chipmunk named “Pickle” who lives in his ribcage. 

   

Personality- Pure, Clumsy, Caring, Timid, Sweet, Tidy

•          The Dr Dolittle of zombies
•          Surprisingly a good cook
•          Happiest when helping people or doing his job
•          Rises every night from an unmarked grave in the forest behind the diner

Delano-

 One of the Diner’s regular customers who happens to be a vampire, but luckily his thirst for blood can be quenched by red slushies, and he has been human free for 40 years. Delano has been around for centuries and struggles to keep up with trends and technology but he tries his best to try and understand them and move into the modern world.

Personality- Extravagant, Dramatic, Eccentric, Bizarre

•          Wants to be hip and down with the kids but is just seen as the un-cool uncle
•          Is addicted to slushies and because of this is often in states of a sugar high or crash
•          Wants to move into the modern world but still holds onto his eccentricity (example: he ballroom dances to dubstep)
•          Being naturally nocturnal, he Loves the late hours and nightlife
•          Loves cats

Mangus-

 The next regular customer, Mangus is a skeleton from Scotland who tells everyone that he died years ago in a great battle, and totally not that he was impaled by some bagpipes. Said bagpipes stuck in his ribcage act as a type of stomach which allows him to drink, which is what draws him to the diner most days. Said bagpipes are also still functional and occasionally make sounds when he moves or gets angry. Mangus gets into trouble a lot with his get rich schemes and lack of respect for authority.

Personality- Devious, Grumpy, self-assured, Scheming, loud, patriotic, smug

•          That grumpy uncle that secretly cares
•          Love to complain, ramble and stir up trouble
•          His bark is worse than his bite
•          Only has Scottish currency
•          Sore loser

Rivet-

Loreta-

 The joint owner/ manager to the Pit Stop diner (although she is hardly ever there), Loreta has a no nonsense policy when it comes to running her business and living her life. She’s sick of all her night shift staff continuously quitting or disappearing so has made a yearlong binding contract for that position. She tells everyone that she doesn’t believe any of their supernatural claims and is tired of hearing these stories. Everything she does is for the money, most of which goes to her rather than her staff or on fixing up the shabby diner, as is evident on her possessions and clothes.

Personality- Stubborn, Stylish, Judgemental, Unimpressed, Money minded, secretive

•          Money is her love
•          Fashion police chief
•          Has a trash can called “The complaints department”
•          Permanent resting bitch face
•          More to her than meets the eye
•          Likes to cut corners with her business, and sometimes the law

Mr Zhao-

Was born in China and moved to America as an adult and has worked as the Pit Stop’s janitor since it first opened. He loves it at the diner as his job is his life and he takes it very seriously. When he first started working there he would work whenever he was needed but one bad experience during the night shift left him rattled and he now refuses to work there after sun down. That incident turned him into a paranoid mess and he now always carries around charms and items to protect him from the supernatural. The only time he is not jumpy or afraid of the supernatural is when it interferes with his work, in times like that he turns into a badass force to be reckoned with.

Personality- Paranoid, Formal, workaholic, perfectionist, superstitious, cautious, Law-abiding 

•          The G.I Joe of janitors
•          Runs his job like a military operation (With no breaking protocol)
•          Most people thing he’s a crazy superstitious mess
•          Troublemakers beware, he can and will use cleaning supplies as weapons