Working in Magnificent TECHNICOLOR!

I've been working more and more on the climax shots of the film and navigating how color is worked into the fight sequence. When our hero is knocked out of the cathedral via the force of his bass the aesthetic shifts from rough/pencil animation to line art.

I like that this shifts him from a climactic surge of power and confidence with many rough strokes to simplified and somewhat hollow line work. This helps to play up his vulnerability as he's tossed around by the giant. When he formulates a plan and fights back I begin working in color and shading.

Up until this point very minimal color is used with particular attention to red. So I use a good deal of red in our character's color palette as well as the overall color script. I'm not as well versed in color theory as I'd like but I am trying to use it to help convey tone and particularly the shift of tone in the fight sequence.

Going back to my mood boards...

I'm particularly fond of the climax in the animated show FLCL. I like the use of intense reds, oranges, and yellows so I bringing that out a good deal. I'm also using somewhat adverse colors to fill out the giant and make him stand out as the antagonist.

This is the rough climax color script I'm working from:

I was initially gonna take these thumbnails and use the exact color in toonboom but I've found that I really gotta work with the color more as I animate to get the most out of the color choices. It doesn't help that the palette changes from shot to shot but I think the overall effect will be worth it.

New Animation Reel!

Most of what has changed are the storyboard and rough animation sections. Backgrounds and some animation have been added to the later parts but my main goal this go-around was to work on the prior sections and make them as visually different as possible to help illustrate the progression.

Have a Gif(t)

Thought I'd give you a look of the interior reveal with screen FX going. Enjoy!

What I'm Working on Right Now

So, updates haven't been quite as forth coming as they normally are and the reason is...complicated.

Mostly, I'm working on parts of the film that you've seen.

I brainstormed to figure out a solution to the aesthetic shift problem. My thesis committee pointed out that they didn't think it quite worked but that the shifts really shouldn't be eased from one aesthetic to the next. They wanted more blunt transitions. Some of the proposed changes were interesting like adding notes onto the storyboards, having the thumbnails move from one frame to the next with a little transition like taking a camera and literally moving it really quick to the next frame. The idea was also thrown around to have the camera stray from the animation in the roughs and show part of the computer interface. I tried a bunch of stuff and you can see some of it on this blog but I've come to one BIG conclusion:

ALL ELEMENTS TO THE AESTHETIC OF THE FILM MUST SERVE THE STORY AND ADD TO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

Basically, the film needs laws with which to govern the look. To this extent, the film shows only what would be shown on-screen while making the film. This means rough timing of thumbnails, animatic, rough animation, clean-up animation, color animation, and full rendered animation. The film will not show the computer interface, character design sheets, movement that doesn't belong in the sequence, etc. Including this kind of tertiary material does not show the world or character evolving but may actually detract from it.

Somewhere in production I lost site of this. It happens. But I really feel the look is back on track to serving the narrative as it should and not just being different for the sake of being different.

I just finished redrawing a fair portion of the storyboards for that aesthetic sequence. I'm including basic shades and slightly more rendered drawings. This will cause a more noticeable shift from the thumbnails.

I'm also adding notes to the rough animation showing the keys, breakdowns, holds, etc. This technique is commonly used in roughs to keep track of elements when timing out and drawing in-betweens. With paper animation you'd see more detailed notes labeling the frame numbers and layer. This isn't the norm with digital animation because you've got a timeline and layer structure in front of you in the interface.

So yeah!

I'm working but not much to show you quite yet. BUT STAY TUNED cause I'm making a new animation reel with these changes and it'll be up soon!!!

Interior Master Environment FINISHED!

I cannot express how much of the look of this film is because of the work of Diego Abad. After two other interior environments he's gotten the look DOWN. I set up the perspective/blocking and he just WENT TO WORK. He pretty much hit it out of the park with just a little direction. Here's the few progress shots in sequence.

Stills below: