Reference for Movement

If you haven't noticed from my previous blog entries, I love working from reference. So, once again, I have collected more resources to work from when animating the lion. However, this time I have searched for footage online of roaring lions. To my surprise I found very few videos which show the lion from my desired angle, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. (This gave me the perfect excuse to re-watch The Lion King)...

The most useful piece of footage I found was Mayer Goldwyn Mayer's renowned lion intro.

A Lion's Silhouette

I have attempted to give the lion a cut-out appearance in order to become suitable for our title sequence's art style. I decided to test the image against multiple backgrounds including white, tea-stained paper and a terracotta-like gradient. 

I have been working hard to animate the lion in Adobe Flash. He is required to roar whilst his mane blows in the wind. This has proven to be difficult thus far, but I shall persevere over the next few days.

Lions for Reference

Before attempting to design the lion, I have carried out a Google image search of "roaring lions". I tried to collect a variety of images to give an indication of how the lion's face will look, particularly their teeth, mane and facial creases.

Evan Eckard's artwork: 'Riot Lion'

After taking heavy influence from Evan Eckard's work - particularly 'Riot Lion' - I have attempted to create a very simplistic design. I feel that it is important to include a low level of detail as the lion will need to be animated. Half of the lion was drawn in Adobe Photoshop, ready to be mirrored to ensure that the design is symmetrical.

Styling Lion Research

The current lion in our animatic. Artwork by Joe Chalmers.

During our history and theory seminar it was suggested that the lion in our title sequence should be central and forward-facing to become more symbolic. I looked at the work of graphic designer, Evan Eckard, whom has created multiple pieces which could inspire our design.