I haven't got the time to start on this properly yet but I may as well get the thread going.

Winkies

What is a Winkie?

No snickering at the back!
Winkies are the occupants of the Winkie country on the western side of Oz. The majority of Winkies are, like the other folk in the land of Oz, young in appearance, no more than age 10 for girls and no more than age 12 for boys. Baum describes the people of Oz as having skin to match the colour of the land that they were born into and as the Winkie country is predominantly yellow so the skin of Winkie folk is generally a shade of yellow. This may be ignored in the TWO movie for artistic reasons but I will initially strive to present the Winkie folk as close to Baum's description as possible. As I haven't located a detailed description of Winkies it's a pretty loose brief.

Winkies are employed in a number of industries including mining, (especially tin), farming, tailoring, jewellery design and manufacturing, tinsmithing and no doubt any other cottage industry. I imagine there are bakers, barbers, builders, graphic designers, A:M users as well as excentric inventors, florists, etc. etc. Lots of possibilities for background characters, all with unique OzCoz, ( Oz costumes).

Winkie descriptions extracted from various stories by L. Frank Baum:

From 'The Emerald City of Oz':

The country through which they now rode was thickly dotted with farmhouses, and yellow grain waved in all the fields. Many of the Winkies could be seen working on their farms and the wild and unsettled parts of Oz were by this time left far behind.

These Winkies appeared to be happy, light-hearted folk, and all removed their caps and bowed low when the red wagon with its load of travelers passed by.

It was not long before they saw something glittering in the sunshine far ahead.

"See!" cried Dorothy; "that's the Tin Castle, Aunt Em!"

( I will add more here as i find relevent details. )

More information on Oz and it's people can be found HERE.


What follows should be a whole lot of ideas and sketches and discussions on all things Winkie. You may have seen the first few of these sketches already but I am including them just to keep everything in one location.

Edit: For the sake of those using dial-up I have now compressed these images to the full. Should be better for all.

I must apologise for the dreadful quality of the images that follow. My scanner is still out of action so these were captured with a digital camera.



Nothing very inspiring here. Just some more really rough ideas:

GREAT sketches - love the variety - love your style

They & the village would be a delight to see.

Wow! fabulous looking stuff!

Lovely !

..d

Great Stuff, Paul! I like your Winkie designs and archetecture. I think that we should accept your Winkies as "approved", so you can start modeling!

Thanks for the positive responses, Nancy, Robert, Doug and Will!

What these sketches are really about is ... tall hats.

The people of Oz are rather partial to tall hats. Hats with a round brim which rise to a point approximately one foot above their heads. Of course if everyone in Oz was to wear tall pointy hats it would just look like a witches convention and would get pretty boring so I am expanding to head gear of all shapes and sizes. Note that they didn't stick to pointy hats in the film either, maybe just to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys. I'm taking one step back in Baum's direction by allowing good guys to wear pointy hats too.

Of course these are just concept sketches and it's possible that none of these will make the next stage but I need to try many possibilities and then find the designs that work well together.

I need to identify how many Winkies are going to be required and what their actions are likely to be.

--------------------EDIT----------------------------


Oh! Okay, Will, that was a bit sudden. I was expecting a long drawn out process but I guess some Winkies are urgently required.

I guess you are going to want quite a few, eh? Farmers in the fields, people in the village streets...

As previously stated I am working on another project for a couple of weeks so if you don't see much activity in here for a few days don't worry. I will do a little modelling every couple of days.

Any preferences for the Winkies or just a good, cosmopolitan mix? Also I am curious about patch density for these Winkies. Are you wanting models with roughly the same density as those that have already been modelled? Also I gather that I don't have to worry about rigging them myself?

Heres an idea for the Winkie people:

perhaps what's needed is a generic female winkie & male winkie based on your style (maybe even start with the woot you already created) - They can then be modified by a variety of people for facial qualities (nose, mouth, eye spacing), stature, girth. Costumes could be added/modified, along with imaginative hats, other accesories.

Would help keep a consistent look but also add variety & get other people involved.

Good idea, Nancy. Generic Winkies as a base that can then be customized with different hats, clothes, hairstyles...

My Woot model stands approximately 4' tall, (120 cm), without his hat and about 130 cm with his hat on. Is that going to be about right in comparison to the other characters? As these generic models are going to be full grown Winkies I guess I had better scale them up to about the height of the Tin Woodman. Do we have a final height for him? I will keep them just under 6' with their hats on for starters and then it is up to others where they take the head gear.

Also, I just wanted to say that I am aware that I stated Baum's rule about no one ageing beyond chidhood and followed with an avalanche of people who are almost all older than 12 years of age. I will try to keep the models looking young. The model will need some modifications, extra splines and alot of tweaking but it is as good a starting point as any. The Winkie below was done some time ago.

I've just seen your sketches Paul... YOU ROCK!!!

Not very nice: AMAZING, GREAT AND MORE!!!

Drvarceto

Thank you so much, Drvarceto!

From what I have read, the area that became Oz was enchanted by magic--fixing the "age" of all inhabitants at the point it was at that time. So there will be all ages represented--they just never change from what they were when Oz was created.
That is why Woot is a well-traveled adventurer, yet is only a child.

Paul--please post a fireframe of that model that you want to clone, so that I can look at the mesh. Our generic one should be hatless, so that you can add different hats to it.

Yes, that's true, Will, but the way that I read it was that children are still born into Oz and they do age but only to the ages of 12 for boys and 10 for girls. Therefore the majority of Oz folk would look between 10 and 12. Whatever, I'm not going to worry about it. If they look old then they are part of the population that was already old when Baum changed the rules.

WOW Really Great concepts Paul!!!
Love the people ideas & the cottages!

Something I keep thinking of is that since TinWwoodsman Rules from a Tin Castle, that there should be symbols of his Kingdom throughout the Village. Much like we wave our country's flag or decorate with the colors & symbols of our country.

I made a really quick sketch of a Standard kinda like those used in Rome. It could be far more elaborately done, but you get the idea. I used a tree & an Axe (after Will's Woodsman Axe). The Tree would be emerald in color & the rest in Tin. Maybe the banner could be a duller Tin to accent the Axe.

Someone may already have an idea like this for the Tin Castle, but this is just something that kept coming to mind for the Winkie Village.

I love that standard, Mike! We could have them lining the main road. Great!

Paul, if you need anyone to help add poses (bigger hands/longer finger etc etc) to your woot, let me know.

Thanks Paul

Another thing I envision is kids playing wearing Tin Hats & with Tin Axes.
Like kids wearing Red Towels playing Superman, but these kids are playing Tin Man.

Hearts can also be part of the Decoration. little girls with Red Heart Neckalaces& playing with Tin Tea Sets.
.....also Tin & Scarecrow Dolls.

And in your Drawings you show a Fountain,
.............we could also have a Larger than Life Staue of TinWoodsman in the Square.

People selling TIn Accesories with rivets, etc. .....designs that accent the Tin Body of TinWoodsman.

Also, maybe some people could be playing the same game that scarecrow is playing in the castle.

Someone selling miniture models of the tin castle......

PS Should the generic winkie be nacked?

Yes we're going to have to rework that mesh. There is not enough detail in some important areas, and too much in others.. Compare the brow and eye areas to the back of the neck--too much for the back of the neck, not enough in the face...
We need to have a bald head and realistic ears.

I love your sketches, but your model doesn't quite come up to the same level. I wonder if we could get Holme's "Woot" mesh and tweak it towards your concept sketches to make a generic Winkie?

Yeah, that would be good, Will. My Woot model was never finished and was only intended as a sort of proxey anyway.

I would disagee about the amount of splines, to some degree, but I'll leave that until another day to prove. If we were striving for realism, rather than just a serviceable and fanciful character, then I would agree.

Mike and Ken, I think that all your suggestions sound great.

Perhaps all the other "meat" characters could serve as original genetic material as well, for the different ages, heights: like Nimee, Chopfyt, KuKlip, Yoop. As long as they're truly modified to not resemble the original.

(Mumbles to self: Yeah just let me get my hands on that ol' Nimmee with her perky you-know-whatsis, and tight little tush - I'll show her what it feels like to get old...Bitter? me? Well..on second thought maybe someone else should re-mold her - Not Mr. John BigBoote tho - we all know what he'll do.)

Hey Nancy

I like the idea of a more fanciful & unique culture. It frees creativity & style by not trying to stck too closely to a look.
The Mayan & Egyptian cultures had similarities, but they were uniquely different.

BTW: I keep going back & looking at your "fountain" ..... an Absolute Thing of Beauty!!!!!

We could certinly see smatterings of that style in the Winkie Village.

I see Winkies as people who rejoice in free expression in their arts and crafts but with a natural tendancy for certain materials and certain shapes. Local materials would be most obvious in their works.

I think that they should have their own, unique, fanciful culture which could borrow from real world cultures but should not take so much of one that it obscures others, if you know what I mean.

As long as everything is made of elaborate metalwork

Absolutely!!

Will, do you think we could snag some of Nancy's time for some of the metalwork?

In a PM, Mike asked something about my technique for "holey" metal work (not sure exactly which technique is "holey") - so would be best to point me to a specific image/pattern...

I really don't do anything magical (other than play & experiment) - but :

In general - I use any old image that suits my fancy as a bump map (either via decal or individual patch images) and I usually up the bump percentage to 200-300%. Perhaps the "punched tin" look? is what you are calling holey? The image is really just all white/or a metal color with grey dots, areas defining a pattern.

The surface diffuse properties of the group are usually a light greyish color, specular color is something orangey - or - goldy - or bluey -100% size, 100% intensity. Sometimes I make the group 20% reflectivity (up to you how shiny you want it). Sometimes I add an abstract color decal on top and play with the intensity - usually turn it down to 10-20% so as to just give a hint of different colored environmental reflections. Some coloration also comes from colored lights.

Sometimes I just use a patch image or decal - no bump, and the intense specular color of the group changes how it appears...

Let me know if that helped or if you were asking something completely different.

I think Will was more thinking of Modeled Elaborate metalwork? Sounds like importing illustrator files & using the AI wizard would help here to get really nifty designs

So, I didn't notice a winkie village in the storyboard video......

No - but there was a Winkie Dwelling (perhaps the outskirts of the village)

Yeah, I'm not sure what is happening regarding the Winkie village now. I'm not ready to jump in yet anyway but it would be nice to know. Is the Winkie village still required?

So is that one Winkie house? Is it still to be in the style outlined by Will Sutton/similar to my concept sketches? Are we going more for mountain shacks now? I'm lost. Time for some art direction me thinks.

The models will be in the style set by me and Jim. The sketches made by the director are storyboards not concept art, used to indicate what is going on and where things are.
We wil have to do some new designs based on the Directors vision, such as a drawbridge at the castle, a cute rabbit, a cow and farm (although, the Winkie Vilage can be in the background of that activity)...

What IS important is that this gives us an idea of what is a "background" object, and what is an important prop that the character has to interract with.
So the Wagon, the tree limb that Woot grabs,etc. need to be detailed and well modeled. The distant shot of the castle can be a pre-rendered layer.

Okay. Thanks, Will.

Time passes ...

____________________________________

Okay. It has been over a month since I last posted in this thread. Many things have changed and I am now rather confused.

We now have a new look and feel to this movie. Robert Taylor is now directing and bringing his own unique style and humour to the project. The storyboards he has created are excellent and inspiring and bring a new lively pace to the story but have forced us to rethink the characters and sets to better suit this style.

This leaves me wondering what I am supposed to be doing.
Is everything on hold now until the character designs are finalised? I can understand that.
Is the Project Plan still valid and would it be possible to have someone in the know post a regular, (weekly/daily), report on the TWO wickie so that interested parties can check to see where we are and what is required?

Just something like:

Nov 12th 2005

TWO Movie Project Status Report

Script : Currently in revision.
Assigned to:
Community activity: Currently NOT REQUIRED.

Character Designs : In revision
Assigned to:
Community activity: Critiques and suggestions only.

Character Models : Assigned
Assigned to:
Community activity: Currently not required

Character Rigging : Assigned
Assigned to:
Community activity: Riggers REQUIRED!

Set Design : In revision
Assigned to:
Community activity: Currently NOT REQUIRED

Set Models : In revision
Assigned to:
Community activity: Currently NOT REQUIRED

etc. ...

_________________________________________

Maybe highlight the departments that are currently seeking participants and make them links to seperate pages with details of activities in that particular department?

I am currently still allocated the Winkies and the Winkie village but that all seems to have changed. Or has it? Do you want me to do some character sketches for Winkies based on the new designs for Tinman, Scarecrow and Woot? Actually is there a new design for Woot? Shall I just wait? Is anyone keeping David informed of what is happening? Will anything be decided before the end of the year?

Not wanting to put pressure on anyone, just hoping for a bit of clarity...
A simplified status report would help immensely!

Oh, Bob, if you are reading this, Happy Birthday for yesterday!

See "TWO Movie Project Wiki/Set Designs/Landscapes".

Those are for you, Paul.


As for production management: V13 has an integrated "revision control system" (RCS) and a linked database with project planning. David Higgins is waiting for those things before he does anything else. Sometime next week, V13 will be available, then David can get going.

Thanks, Martin.

That should be fun.