Stupidly, I destroyed my laptop a couple of weeks ago while sleeping (strangely the next day I remembered a dream involving Raoul Moat ) Today I've received a replacement from my insurance company, so I can crack on with the project. I have the story fully developed, and am just polishing off the storyboards. Im hoping to have the animatic finished soon. I have been working best I can since then and I have some mock-maya scenes set up. I think the black and white film noir look is working so far, but I reckon it's going to look much better with some post-production in After Effects to make it seem a lot more Grainy.

I keep trying to push the surroundings as much as possible, so I've added a couple of classic Western objects into the story. The luggage jumps on a western-styled wagon before running up a classic water-tower (using the pipe) to board the train. This has made the animation even more ambitious and I reckon the next month or so will be a challenge.

Now I feel that time is against me, so I have started some Maya. Below is the first draft of the Ticket Office but I expect it will look different before the end. I've also made a start on the platform, but it is quite empty at the moment. Im hoping to scrutunise all of this to make sure nothing looks out of place or lacking, but I need to save A LOT of time for animating, which I know the littlest about.

I've also started thinking about my book, I think it will be quite short, as I don't want to ramble on (30-40 Pages) and will be quite image heavy. I'll dedicate the last week of August to get it together.

I've still got some concepts to do, I want to work out the suitcase's character to a better extent before modelling and animating him, same with the female. I also want to sketch out the water-tower before modelling that too.

The style as shown in my first drafts below, is quite simple, I want to concentrate on the animation, and the environment shouldn't need much detail as Im expecting the cameras and characters to move quite fast, so small details won't be seen. I haven't changed the concepts much at all for the ticket office, I've stuck more or less to the original sketches. The Platform I have added a wooden-roof, which I've noticed on all my research, I still have a lot to add to the platform (Benches, posters, luggage, etc)








The way I've been texturing so far is to create the textures in colour, and then desaturate them in Photoshop and tweak the levels / curves. It doesn't take too long and keeps some of the detail of the colour.