GOOD COP BAD COP
Project & Roles
For this project I chose “GOOD COP, BAD COP” Written by Matt Soden. Joining me were the following students from the BA Animation course and MA Writers course:
Gary McFarlane (Animation Arts)
Zirui Li (Game Arts)
Junyoung Kim (3D Animation) –
Sofia Gunnarsson Borges (3D Animation)
Christopher Leonard (MA Screenwriting)
Onyero Kihodu (MA Screenwriting)
Luke McCabe (MA Screenwriting)
Once the group was formed, we got together to organise weekly meetings our roles seen in Table 1 displays the roles with-in the Animation team from the .
Table 1 – Animation Roles
| Kenny Mays | Producer/Line Producer |
| Gary McFarlane | Animation Director |
| Sofia Gunnarsson Borges | Character Artist/Animator |
| Zirui Li | Background/Concept Artist |
| Junyoung Kim | Background Artist/Graphic design |
Schedule/ Workflow
The team scheduled to meet every Monday for a group catch up and set tasks for each week
screenshot 1 – GOOD COP, BAP COP PLANNER
screenshot 2 – GOOD COP, BAP COP PLANNER
Pre-Production
Mood-boards/Padlet
After having our group assigned to us on the 22nd of February Sofia quickly created a Padlet for the team to upload any ideas and previous examples of programmes similar and create mood-boards. Screenshot 3 displays this mood-board including original design work produced by the team.
screenshot 3 – GOOD COP, BAD COP PADLET
Concept Designs & Character Development
Week 1
We had taken a look through the synopsis of the show together and dove into the details of the main characters “Ron Claypole” and “Dick Smallwood” (formerly Dick Sweeney). We also explored the environment being “Dodge Village” in detail and concluded the meeting with a team’s weekly task.
Before deciding on sub-categorised roles, it was essential to explore different styles and techniques to see what the writers and animators agree fit best with the theme of “Good Cop, Bad Cop”. That being said, we decided to each come up with a concept poster displaying characters and environment based on the show’s synopsis. Also, as Matt stated, he was open to new ideas. It gave us free will to input new ideas and characters within our images. Figure 1 shows my concept poster for the series.
Poster Concepts are available via Padlet
Figure 1 – “Good Cop, Bad Cop Poster Concept” Mays.K (2021)
On the 1st of March we got together again for our Monday meeting to discuss the concepts that had been produced in the week. Essentially the writers were keen on the Ron and Dick characters Sofia had made and felt mine and Zirui’s Backgrounds were most fitting for the shows theme and antics.
Week 2
From the 1st – 7th of march we produced a selection of characters and background designs based upon writers’ notes provided by Matt Soden. Down below in figure 2 is a gallery of my Character and Background designs from this week.
All Other Concept designs are available via Google Drive .
Week 3
On the Monday meeting we studied the concepts again and decided the characters (Ron and Dick) that Sofia and Gary had produced were the ones we would greenlight, however, there was still experimentation required for the background designs as the team were undecided between mine and Ziruis concepts.
We had also received new information regarding characters and environment from the writers (available via Google Drive). With this information I asked the team to focus on the character designs this week due to the sudden boost of work for the character design team. While the team would get to work on the characters. Zirui and I would also produce a Village-map given to us by Matt Soden. This was to be use as a reference point for any future background art. The other purpose of this was to test run the LINE ARTIST > COLOUR ARTIST > LIGHTING Process as this was fairly new to Zirui and I mostly working on Indie Video Game Projects. In this instance I was the colour artist.
Below in Figure 3 is the Dodge Village Map
Figure 3 – “Dodge Village Map” Li,Z and Mays,K (2021)
Figure 4 showcases a gallery of My character design input for that week.
I assigned each team member with 2-5 characters depending on their FMP scheduling and skill in the subject as Gary and Sofia have experience in 2D characters I assigned them with most characters.
Figure 4 – “GOOD COP, BAD COP Character designs” Mays.K (2021)
Week 4
Apart from some minor adjustments to characters saturation and appearance the whole team had agreed upon the character designs created last week. This week I set the background artists to create 2 background scenes for the show based on notes provided by Matt. Also, the character team were to make the necessary adjustments and begin developing characters using a template to keep our work uniform, ready for our interim 3 presentation.
Notes are available via google drive
Figure 5 & 6 shows My initial Background designs for the Church & front desk. Including some character placement. Matt and I felt as though this background style worked best with the Characters appearance and the feel of dodge village. Having the crooked linework and bold cartoon lines amplify the feeling of an imperfect environment which is very much what “Dodge Village” is set out to be as this style is bright and playful, we feel this would suit the target audience of children aged between 11 and 16.
Figure 5 – “Church” Mays.K 2021
Figure 6 – “Police Front Desk” Mays. K 2021
Figure 7 – “GOOD COP, BAD COP Character Design/Development” Mays.K (2021)
Week 5
We are now on week 5 and Approaching the end of the Pre-Production stage and need are now discussing with the writers how we are going to produce our teaser for the final pitch on Thursday 17th of June.
This week we discussed ideas in ways which we could portray the show’s theme and characters in a 30 – 60 second time frame. The idea to create a Title Sequence with a similar format to “Brooklyn 99” was formed. We chose this format as it’s time efficient as we won’t have to record voice actors and lip sync… Instead we can use music as well as this we can use freeze frames as a means to show a short character description.
Whilst matt and the writers would begin coming up with a storyboard and scene descriptions for us, I set the team to work practice workflow for LINE>COLOUR>LIGHTING and test character animations using Adobe Animate CC as this is a software, we are all familiar with.
Table 2 Showcases our Subcategorised roles for the next stage of production.
Table 2 – Sub-categorised Roles
| Kenny Mays | Character Lighting Artist Background Line Artist Background Animation |
| Gary McFarlane | Character Line Artist Keyframe artist |
| Sofia Gunnarsson Borges | Character Colour Artist In between Artist |
| Zirui Li | Background Colour Artist Character Colour artist In between Artist |
| Junyoung Kim | Background Colour Artist Character Colour artist |
Week 6
Whilst we wait for the script from the writers to develop a storyboard, I thought it was best for the team to practice our workflow and try different animation methods within animate cc (a programme we are all familiar with).
This week Zirui, Junyoung and I produced four background scenes in the roles specified in table 2. There are no intentions to use these scenes for any part of our final pitch. However, this allowed us to critique the scenes and problem-solve to perfect the style we chose to go ahead with.
Whilst the background team working on that i had the character and animation team finishing the stills matt requested the previous week and produce a dick and ron walk cycle either by use of frame by frame or rig.
By sunday we had produced the following:
I chose to attempt a character rig using animate CC. This is not something i am familliar with however, as gary is the only 2d animator on the team i feel it would be useful for the team to be able to animate rigged characters rather than attempt frame by frame This would mean the team could each work on a scene whilst keeping the style consistent. this is time saving and cost efficient for a proffesional setting.
Week 7
Interim presentation 2 this week. overall we received posotive feedback however it was noted that our character shots do not draw the viewer into the world we have designed, We should include more images of the characters involved in funny situations or something that really shows off who they are in one shot.
Our work so far has been very consistent however it is layed out for a work setting rather than a pitch. Because of this we realised it was useless showing a fancy trailer if we could not draw in the crowd in the initial descriptons of who ron and dick are and the village they live in.
We spent this week narrowing down the trailer we had planned to storyboard and instead created more stills of characters in scenes to showcase during our slide.
We also needed more props for the show as the scenes seem to look quite empty. I asked Zirui and Junyoung to create a page of props for the scenes matt had sent up over while the character team would work on the stills
down below are stills I made up with Zirui and Junyoung. During this time sofia and gary would create storyboards for the episodes.