Concept Art
During the early stages of creating the story, Nicole and I gathered some references to make mood boards for potential characters and environments. Originally, we were going to have more characters and environments, but we decided to condense this amount to only what is necessary, this will help the story to flow better and make the amount of work more achievable.
When deciding what animation style we should use, we both were interested in exploring the rubber hose style. This type of animation is very fluid and stretchy, the proportions warp and compress when they move creating a very exciting and fun style. To help us with understanding the rubber hose style we looked at cartoons such as Silly Symphonies, Cuphead and Adventure Time.
I also researched how these styles of animation are made by watching these videos:
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Characters
We had five different robot ideas, a gumball dispenser, a lollipop dispenser, a bouncy ball machine, a ticket eater and a claw game. To decide which characters would be chosen I drew some quick silhouettes of what they could have looked like. I tried to add the key shapes that made the machines recognisable, after some discussions with Nicole we settled on the Gumball and the Lollipop dispenser.
Since there are two main characters in the story, Nicole and I decided to design one each. To keep them withing the same style we agreed to make them both have exposed metal arms and necks, puffy trousers and gloved hands. We wanted them both to have a candy theme as this would make it feel more like Gumball is being replaced by Lollipop, reinforcing their rivalry and Gumball’s jealousy. When designing Lollipop, I originally used squares as his main shape language as this directly contrasted Gumballs’ more rounded appearance. I also explored different faces by experimenting with the shapes and proportions of the features. Finally, I created a character sheet with Lollipops full body, colour scheme and some expressions that appear will appear in the animation.
When I showed Mike, he told me that Lollipop is too sharp and comes across as the villain, and he looks older than Gumball due to his stiff arms and a more clunky silhouette. I went back and adjusted Lollipops body to have a more action figure appearance, similar to Buzz from ‘Toy Story’. I also designed his torso and arms to be stretchy to give him more movement. I revisited his colour pallet to balance the distribution of the two green tones and add more red to make him pop. Moreover, I experimented with different head shapes as Mike mentioned that the square head still made him look too villainous, I chose to go with the rounded goblet shape as it kept the aggressive look without being evil.
Next, I created the turn around sheets for both Gumball and Lollipop. I added some patches to Gumball’s legs and rivets to his chest to make him appear older and more worn out. However, due to time constraints these details were not added to the final animation.
The kid characters are designed to be similar as they all use the same base with small differences such as their hair and clothing. Most of the kids will be silhouetted as they are only to fill in the foreground. My first iteration was more elongated as I tried to use the proportions of the characters in ‘Adventure Time’, however they did not really suit the stye of our animation so I de-designed them to be more chibi and round. I referenced the player characters in ‘Animal Crossing’ as they use more rounded shapes, I also pushed the hair styles to be bigger and more unique, so the kids looked distinct when silhouetted in front of the characters.
Nicole created a style guide for the faces, bodies and a no-no sheet, she also created a style guide that detailed how everything within the project should look so the whole animation looks cohesive. 
(Nicole’s style guides)
Environments
Nicole and I discussed creating a 3D background as we both enjoy 3D modeling and texturing; this would also reduce the workload as the background changes angles a lot so making it 3D would save us time as we would not have to draw the background. I also like the look of 3D backgrounds that are made to look 2D, it adds an interesting look to the animation. We made a list of all the props that would be necessary. I created the concept art for them and used the characters heights to gauge the proportions of the props, I also tried some room layout and created a very rough isometric room layout idea. We wanted them to look chunky and have rounded edges to give them a soft look. However, before we committed to making the backgrounds in 3D, Nicole started to work on a test render of an arcade machine to make sure we liked the results.
(Nicole’s arcade machine)
Storyboards
Nicole drew the storyboards based on the story we had created on the Miro board; they went through a lot of changes as we received feedback from the tutors and from each other on pacing, plot and overall story continuity.
First storyboards
(Nicole’s storyboards)
Final Storyboards
(Nicole’s storyboards)
These changes to the storyboards caused us to have to re-schedule our time as the animation was now longer. We adapted quickly to the new schedule as all we had to do was work a bit faster to accommodate the new length of the animation.
Animatics
I was in charge of making the animatics; when the first animatic was made the storyboards were still changing so the animatic also evolved as feedback was given by the tutors and Nicole. This was the first animatic that matched the fourth storyboard iteration.
This is the final animatic that I made, the pacing is faster compared to the previous version, some scenes have been exaggerated to better emprise the actions and a few scenes were shuffled around to help with the continuity of the animation. I also added a song that I found on Adobe Stock called ‘Toon’ created by Victory Flags, the song is playful with a little mischief in the middle which matches our animation quite well, I hope to be able to use this song in the final cut of the animation however I worry the song will not be long enough if the animation is extended further.
Pipeline and Tests
I suggested that I make the pipeline test and Nicole could continue to test the 3D background idea, we both agreed, and I got to work on figuring out how stretchy we wanted our animation to be. I created 2 different entrances for Gumball, one with a little stretch and the other is so stretchy that his proportions warp to exaggerate the movement. After talking with Nicole and receiving feedback from the tutors I decided somewhere in the middle of these styles would work best for the film.
Gumball Entrance Version 1
Gumball Entrance Version 2
After figuring out the amount of stretch we wanted I decided to work on scene 7 as the pipeline test. I animated this scene from the rough animation stage all the way through to the final render.
Rough and Secondary animation
Line Art and Colour
Colour and Final Render
After completing this animation, it gave us insight into understanding our whole process from the rough pass, secondary, line art, colour and rendering. It also really helped us to see how long a single stage of the animation could take and how we need to plan accordingly to avoid pitfalls and delays in the future. During the pipeline test I struggled with the juggling animation, my first rendition was too stiff, his arms looked as though they were on a pivot rather than flowing with the rhythm of the balls.
I then looked up some references of juggling to help me understand how the arms are meant to move.
These did help, however, I also tried to make the body sway at the same time which then confused me and I messed up the loop, I tried to fix it by adjusting the placement of the balls and arms to make them flow with the sway but every time I adjusted one frame the next had to be adjusted, this turned into a vicious cycle and so I scraped that animation to start fresh.
I went back to basics and mapped out where the arms would be if the juggler was standing still until I got the loop right, I then too the frames of the swaying body from the failed attempt and adjusted them to loop, finally I added the arms to the body making sure they follow a figure eight pattern.
I also animated some balloons slowly moving for the background
While I was animating the pipeline, Nicole focused on finishing the arcade machine as well as creating a toon shader and a tileable carpet texture. She added the 2D characters into the scene with the 3D arcade machine.
(Nicole’s test render)
After looking at the render we both agreed that we like the 3D background, however, the colours need to be brighter and a thicker line weight. We agreed to move forward with the 3D background.
Overall, we had fun in the pre-production stage of this project, the characters and background look great, and the story has developed into something really interesting. Of course, a few issues arose with the juggling animation, but everything is back on track, and we are ready for the production stage.