Personal Project: Flight

After my previous concept flopped I decided to develop one of my other concepts instead.  This concept was Flight, and is about a young Meerkat who wishes he could fly.

I began this development by creating a mood-board.

This animation will take place in a desert, based off the Kalahari Desert.  The Kalahari desert is populated with plants including the Camelthorn acacia tree and grasses.  The two main characters of this animation are Meerkat and Eagle.

Meerkat lives with his family in the desert.  He is very young, naive and a dreamer.  His dream is that he could fly, just like the eagles do.  So while his family hides in fear from the eagles, Meerkat watches them with admiration.

For Meerkat's design I looked a photos of Meerkats.   www.arkive.org has a good compilation of images so I created a reference board using imagery for there. 

 This is the design I came up with for Meerkat.

My other character is Eagle.  She is a Martial Eagle and likes to snack on the animals who live in the desert.

 Eagles Design:

 Next I began to develop the world.  These are a couple of quick paintings exploring the colour palette of the world.