Two posts in one night, what has the world come to!
I thought I’d get to the rough structure of the short all boarded up before working on the details of the day dreams. First, since it will serve as the vehicle for al of my experiments with hybrid animation, and also, because it won’t be as stylised as some of the daydreams, it won’t require large amounts of research prior to boarding. For the day dreams, I want them to feel as authentic to the styles I’m referencing, so I’ll need to make mood boards for all of them beforehand to solidify the character styles, as well as to watch a whole bunch of videos in order to best match the style of camera movements and shot choreography.
I think when making the mood boards, I’ll prioritise the day dream sequences I definitely will include, and then those which could be removed if I end up short on time. Additionally, the format of the short means that if I have extra time I can also work in more styles of day dreams.
I thought I’d start off on the concept art with an exploration of how the ‘real world’ will look. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I want to have a lot of contrast between the daydream world and the rest of the film. Since I plan to make the thoughts and daydreams more wishy-washy and misty, I wanted to make this more solid looking to differentiate the two.
To do this, I tested out my first attempt at hybrid animation techniques!
I used pre-made 3D assets to map out the room, keeping in mind how I was planning to animate in the shot, before drawing over them in the 2D hand drawn style. The very flat colouring wasn’t planned, but while working on what was meant to be the base colours, I really liked how it was looking, and I think it helps make the cluttered background look slightly less overwhelming. Backgrounds aren’t my thing, but I like how this one turned out!
For animating the real world, I’m thinking I want to try and keep the shots more static, with more limited animation, again to create that contrast – which I kept in mind while planning out this test background. So, I needed to make sure that it would feature all of the assets that needed to be there for the shot I was wanting. This would be one of the earliest shots of the film, and therefore the morning routine aspect of the whole, ‘day-to-day life of a telepath’. At this point, I’m thinking I want to depict the telepaths housemate coming down the stairs, making herself a coffee, maybe checking for mail, and then slumping down at the table to segue into a daydream about anime. When arranging this room, I also wanted to keep all of this on the righthand side of the screen, so that I can have the main character travelling left-to-right for the first part of the day, and then reverse it when she’s coming home.
At this point, I think my next aspect of the project, I’m going to get started on actually boarding the thing. I’ve got a bunch of notes, and a ton of it planned out in my head, I really just need to actually bring that all into reality as something I can actually show people at some point!
My program of study for this masters, involves experimenting with hybrid animation as a way to try and make hand drawn animation, or at least the aesthetic of the style, more practical for things like an industry pipeline. As part of this program of study, I will also research into what exactly it is that makes hand drawn 2D animation so appealing to so many people. Other than just the obvious nostalgia!
Anyway! For my final outcome this year, I’m going to make a short film depicting a day in the life of a telepath, who is able to dip in and out of peoples daydreams! Through this, I hope to explore lots of different styles, allowing me to test different methods of animation.
Those different styles are definitely important. From the reading I’ve done so far, the key to successful hybrid animation is to not force it. To use it where appropriate, and not just for the sake of it, because that will only serve to take someone out of the scene to look at the different looking animation technique. Like Treasure Planet and the Iron giant! Both incredible, and I love them so much, as anyone who is forced to read my academic essays will tell you, since I refer to them literally all the time. The key there, is line mileage! Basically if you were to stretch all the lines out used when drawing things like the titular giant, of Long John Silver’s prosthetic, all of those extra millimetres of lines that need drawn take so much longer to repeatedly draw, so it makes sense to use 3D to augment the hand drawn animation.
But back to my final outcome! I’ve started off by creating the two mood boards since I’m going to need to convey things like telepathy and day dreams without just being able to say them. So, I’m going to use two very distinct colour palettes, and I think I’ll use backgrounds as well to convey this change, with very busy structured backgrounds for the real world, to contrast with very wispy, abstract ones for the daydreams. Inspired in part by the way the live action movies depict Professor Xavier’s telepathy when using cerebro. There, its shown as a big misty black void, with the more solid figures standing about in it, and I think that would work well for me too.
Also! My first suitable use of hybrid animation! If I use 3D models or live action references and then draw over them in my 2D style, it would definitely make sense for creating my real world backgrounds.
Time to officially start my blog for the DJCAD Animation & VFX masters program!
I’ll be using this as a way to record my progress, inspiration and general thoughts on various projects throughout the course – but with the majority of the focus being on my final outcome…
