360°

I have spent the last couple of days creating a full 360° animated rotation of my Deer-Man character.

I did this because I want there to be a bit more freedom of movement in my animation than a basic 2D anime studio rig will allow. I am aware however, having chosen to create an animation largely about antlers, that I have some fairly complex shapes to rotate frame by frame in a third dimension.

To serve as a guide for this rotation I created a basic 3D model in SketchUp, just something to identify mass, based on an existing image of the 2D anime studio rig that I had previously made for a walk test of the character.

Once the 3D model was built, I made a quicktime of it rotating and essentially just rotoscoped that footage using a style that may be something more like the finished article that I'm looking for.

Although I probably won't be using this 3D model, rotoscoping technique for the final animation, this exercise can be used as reference when I do come to animate something like a head turn for example.    

    

Hart's Desire Comic

At this stage, rather than developing a storyboard and animatics I have been creating a comic of my deer-man story.
Having cited independent comic book artists as inspiration, and while writing an essay on the relationship between animation and comics, I decided that it might be interesting to initially develop the narrative in comics form. My hope was that this process would help me to develop a more considered approach to the composition and 'scene-craft' of the story that may have been lacking if I had dived into creating an animatic for motion.

Here are a couple of pages from the comic, which I have titled Hart's Desire (get it? A Hart is a name given to stags... aha ha ha, how terribly clever). I intend on building up the artwork a bit with shading and perhaps subtle colour. Click on them to enlarge.

One thing that I have noticed is that I have found it difficult to completely let go of the animator in me: in a great deal of the comic there are only small changes from panel to panel, meaning that I am trying to control the motion and show the reader/audience exactly how things are moving. When I look at other comic books there seems to be the potential for far greater changes in image from one panel to the next (especially in action packed superhero comics) while still creating the sense of a coherent and flowing story. 

Having said that, because this is a 'silent' comic (as there is no dialogue) the story relies even more heavily on the imagery and I think that there is a greater need to ensure that the audience are able to understand what is happening through the sequencing of action. Also, because there is no time prescribed in the reading of comics unlike in animation (when the audience does not dictate the pace of the action), the artist must try to take some control over how somebody interprets the pacing. One way that this can be done is by only changing things subtly between panels to suggest a slower, more delicate flow. The comics of Jon McNaught, one of my favourite comics artists, are often 'silent', 'delicate' and well considered by using this technique of subtle changes. Here's an example of his work.

What strikes me about McNaught's work is that it shows a very considered and effective, highly designed approach. I think that this is what attracts me to it most: a remnant of my architectural education perhaps, as I can't help but think of McNaught as a comics designer rather than a comics artist. I think that my Hart's Desire comic shows some level of this attention to design... because of this I think that it has been a worthwhile sub-project as I'm not sure this would have developed in an animatic. I hope that I can now take pieces of what works well in the comic and filter them into my approach to the animated film.   

Character Design- Old Man

I've just been perusing some earlier concept stuff I did and stopped to think when I looked at this drawing.

More recently I have been drawing my old man in a very simple way: just a bald circle for his head. He looks quite babyish sometimes. I like this older drawing and I think it's mostly because he has a beard! Nothing says old man like a beard.

Since I'm talking about beards... click here for a brilliant celebration of the beard in animated musical form!

Yipee... Animation!!!

Couldn't resist a wee bit of animating.

Here's a little test I did of the deer-man. It's just a simple anime studio rig, drawn in photoshop. 

The quality is awful... so here's a still at full res so you can see the detail that you're supposed to see. (click it for full size view)...

Second Pitch

Here's a bit of a summary of the second pitching session in which there was a chance to develop our ideas and address any issues that had arisen after the first pitch as well as giving us the opportunity to pitch to a new audience member with a fresh set of eyes and ears: Ross McKenzie from Creative Scotland.  

Since the first pitch I have been concentrating on getting my story to work. 

I have come up with a simple structure for the narrative, based on just a few key moments and situations. By stripping the narrative back to these few key moments I found it easier to ensure that there is a story structure that will make sense and, hopefully, be satisfying. This forms a skeleton onto which I can build the more 'delicate', 'human' moments that will flesh out the story and develop our connections with, and understanding of, the characters.

This slide from the pitch (click it for a bigger view) shows the breakdown of the story: the key moments-

1. An old man in the town looks, longingly, to the hills.
2. A deer-man in the hills looks, longingly, to the town.
3. Old man resolves to take to the hills. On his way he finds a shed deer's antler which he takes (and later decides to wear), leaving his walking stick behind.
4. Deer-man is lonely.
5. At some point the old man and the deer-man come upon one another and share a cup of tea (an act of human kindness which triggers the transformation of the deer-man into something less wild).
6. Old man stays in the hills and puts on a second antler which the deer-man has just shed (old man's transformation is self initiated: he chooses to wear the antlers, he decides to become something more wild).
7. Deer-man, encouraged by the human interaction makes his way to the town. On his way down he finds a discarded walking stick... which he takes, leaving his remaining antler behind.

This narrative can be read either as a straight swap for the characters (they each long for elements of the other's life... and in the end get it) or it can be seen as cyclical (there is now an antler where there was one before, a man with a walking stick in town and a man wearing antlers in the hills just as there is at the start of the film) in which case the film's message has an increased 'grass is always greener' tone.

The pitch was received well with a general agreement that this distilled story structure works. The challenge, now, will be the handling of the afore-mentioned more 'delicate' moments that flesh it out. It was Alan's opinion that a particular challenge will be how to deal with the meeting of the deer-man and the old man, one of the most important moments in the film that will also potentially be one of the most dynamic and 'action packed' (though I use the term with caution).

I think that there was a slight concern that the motivations for the deer-man to go down to the town may not be clear but I am confident that, through the delicate moments and character development, I can paint the picture that the deer-man is lonely in the hills and craves the human interaction that, he thinks, can be found in the town. Shots like the panel in which that deer-man is looking to the town will hopefully go a long way to help this.

The Big Boy

I watched The Big Boy by Lee Kyu-tae the other day.

There are a few things about it that I was hoping to have something like in my film.

There are moments in the film like this aerial shot of the town, for example, that are brilliantly restrained and analytical (my new favourite description and a word that I am using in the development of my film). 

These two frames show how varied detail is used depending on how close the characters are in shot. In fact they're pretty much completely different design styles. I think that this is sort of possible because there aren't really specific characters other than the Big Boy himself: there are just townspeople. In my film the character design will remain more consistent, it'll just be the levels of detail and how they are drawn that change. (maybe).

And this frame shows a splitting of the shot into panels (like I discussed in the earlier Paul Driessen post this is something that I'd like to explore: a nod to narrative illustration). It's done quite delicately here which is nice.

The House On Little Cubes

I watched The House On Little Cubes by Kunio Kato yesterday.

I think it's great. I find it very satisfying when there is a clever and creative yet simple concept on which to build an involving narrative.

In this case the simple concept (when I say "simple" I don't mean it in any sense that would undermine Kato's creativity... I don't mean basic... it's difficult to make things simple!) is that a man has had to build his house higher and higher, block onto block, as water around him has risen over the years. This one device forms the narrative for the film and acts as a metaphor for his own life: as he has built higher he has had to build smaller. The bottom of the house which he inhabited earlier in his life, when he had a family around him, is spacious while at the top, where he now lives alone, is a single room with bed, kitchen and living in one.

This film stood out for me because I am trying to construct a similarly simple, analytical device as the bones of my film onto which a more delicate, 'human' narrative can be fleshed out, just as is the case here.

It does contain some 'I'm now all on my own' cliches that I'm not too keen on (and have tried to avoid in my own solitude themed narrative) like staring at old framed photos of your now absent family. Having said that it's cliched for a reason (it works) and it does suit the general mood of this film, one of the main themes of which is memory and loss.

Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. I'll be keeping it in mind and trying to capture something of what makes it work in my own film.