Initial Ideas:
For this project I decided to work with a different set of people form my first project so I could expand my working capabilities with others. The brief for this project was to create a 20 second animation story, we had a 1 week to get this green lit before the Winter Holidays.
My groups concept for this brief was a story about a king main character who see’s his tragic future within a crystal ball, seeing that he will get killed by a shadowy figure. Due to this the king character exiles all villagers out of the kingdom, leaving only himself and his son left. In one of the final scenes that king see’s a shoddy figure coming towards this, in anticipation that he will be murdered the king stabs the figure, however, unknowably killing his son. The final scene of the short will be the kingdom falling down, demonstrating the downfall of all characters.
For this project we wanted to focus on a Shakespeare tragedy style of narrative, creating characters with a hubris and fatal flaw to intrigue the audience. While also having a somewhat comedic tone and sense of dramatic irony to real the audience into the narrative.
Below is a moodpboard I created in the first week to try and investigate what tone, style and mood we would like for the short. These images were resourced from art websites and Pinterest for inspiration. Alongside this I looked at colours that would best suit the film, taking inspiration from the film adoption of ‘Macbeth’ as I feel the colour palette and imagery in this works beautifully well in a historical and medical time period piece.
MOODBOARD:
STORYBOARD:
Below is the final refined storyboard created by my team mate Shelly. initially each team member drew out their own interpretation of the narrative, then we put these together to create a storyboard that we thought both collaborated all of our idea’s and was visually pleasing. Overall, Shelly then combined these and drew them up so the tone and style of the storyboard flowed.
CONCEPT ART:
Over the winter break I drew the concept art for the two main characters we intended to use for the animation. This was done by using procreate.
For the kings character I intended him to have an arrogant and stubborn tone to him, giving him wide and large body and facial features. I also made his outfit mainly consisting of the colour of red to imply a sense of danger. For the background of this work I was told my one of my 2D design teachers to add the main colour palette in the background of character designs to see if the characters colours and the main colours of the film correlate and work well together. Overall, I am really happy with this design, however, I should have created a full turn around for the character.
Above is the concept art for the kings son, the prince. Again for this I used the app procreate and tried to make a character that was very much the opposite of his opposing character, the king. giving him lighter, more angular features alongside a bright and soothing colour tone of blues and light greys. I feel this character design works well and suits the tone of the film.
BACKGROUND DESIGN:
13/01/23 — During this work session at Uni my team mates and I discussed possible changes to the 5 seconds I made, this was to create more of a shadow around the crystal ball effecting the king character. This was then achieved in Adobe Photoshop, painting over top of the already existing footage. I feel this made the character more life like and believable that he is inside the crystal ball.
16/01/23 — At Uni today my group again got together in class and discussed more about the possible sound effects and music we could use. Sound effects will be created originally, perhaps using a sound room and with formal equipment. Alongside this, during this session today of work I will try find some copyright free music; my team agreed on a medieval/ancient sound as it both emphasizes the time period that the narrative is in. Moreover, when looking over the animation I had already created I felt it was lacking movement. The lift of the cup from the king character was very stiff and didn’t show much life. To correct this, this week I am going to animate the character to look as if he is breathing, movement in the background (perhaps birds, incoming sunlight or other characters passing by). I will also add eye movement to the larger king character, perhaps him blinking or his head tilting; this I feel is needed to add more life and spirit into the character.
FINAL 5 SECOND CLIP:
Above is the final 5 second clip I created for my part of the film, at first the only movement in the scene was the shadow and the king drinking poison, however many edits I changed this and added much more movement to make the scene more dynamic. Throughout the edits we see the character open and close his eyes, movement of his cape to imitate breathing, a walk cycle of another character in the background and a colour change to add emotive effect. I feel this works really well and is a greater improvement than my first attempt at the initial animation.
FINAL FILM – REGICIDE
For the out of your head project, I collaborated with students from my course in a group of four, these being people I had never worked with previously, I did this purposely to try and connect with others on my course. When reflecting on our collaboration I strongly felt we operated well as a team, always sharing and bouncing across ideas and designs for the project throughout our pre-production phase. To divide the workload equally we decided to separate the twenty second brief into five seconds of footage per person. This strategy worked extremely well as we were able to send each other our work across the winter break and gain feedback and comments to improve, while we didn’t animate collectively together on each scene, I felt dividing the scenes allowed a sense of individuality and differed style in each clip. Even despite this, by the end of the animating period our styles flowed aesthetically together and communicated a readable narrative. When returning to university we conversed on improvement of each other’s work and edited sound and timing together for the final product. Overall, our group communication, collaboration and idea generation allowed for an enjoyable and exciting experience making this film.
Initially when first generating ideas for this project we created numerous mind maps and concept pages, working from the chosen prompt words: poison, village, shadow, swamp and castle. I had an excellent experience collaborating on ideas for this, having to eventually only choose one story line to work from. We then began storyboarding, each creating our own version of what we personally saw the narrative to look like and then piecing them together, allowing each person to have a part of their idea stitched into the script. Throughout the winter break I animated my chosen scene on the app Procreate, alongside producing the character designs. Due to having more free reign on the aesthetic and style of the characters I deeply enjoyed this part of the pre-production, being able to create a diverse range of character designs to choose from. I learnt a lot more about anatomy and how to properly pose characters, alongside gaining a greater knowledge on colour theory and concept character sheets. Furthermore, one of the most challenging parts of my animation sequence was the walk cycle, having to use real life references and timing to accurately create this. I later used Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to edit the animation; I feel that during this rotation I have been able to improve my skill on these software’s in which I feel I can use them confidently for my next project.
Moreover, when reflecting back on the concept for our film I feel it contained a strong and entertaining narrative, taking a spin on famous historical plots such as Macbeth. The plot for our story was to show a king seeing his future in a crystal ball that he would be killed by a mysterious shadow figure, his response to this is evicting all the people within his castle, only leaving himself and his son. Nevertheless, he sees the shadowy figure and decides to kill it himself, only to find out it was his son all along, we watch the king fall to his knees and the castle crumble away. I really enjoyed creating a medieval era piece for this project as is vastly differs from other shorts I’ve worked on previously and for me had to require a new way of thinking about film, such as the clothing, settings and language used. The only part of the short I would have changed would have been the pacing, as the brief only allowed us twenty seconds of footage and therefore, I would have liked to slow down the scenes for a more dramatic effect. Nevertheless, I feel our chosen concept and narrative is entertaining and exciting, and has allowed me to push myself further within my story telling skills.
Lastly, my overall experience of this project was extremely positive, I feel I have gained better skill in my communication when directing a team, alongside my animating skills, challenging myself to create scenes I may have been too anxious to try previously. I have also gained a larger interest in character design, this being a part of the project I enjoyed the most and is now something I want to take further into my animation career. Ultimately, creating this film has given me a lot more confidence in my animating skills and has given me the experience of being able to direct a team.