Environment: Street Reference

The architecture in my story is meant to be based on Edinburgh's Old Town so I grabbed a few photos for reference:

Research: line art

Here's some of the reference that I've gathered for the "drawn" look that I want to emulate in the environments:

Reference: Skoda Ad

I'm still developing ideas for both the story and the final look: I had thought of using realistic paper textures and an animation style based on origami, however, I'm now thinking that this has been used too much recently. There are some amazing examples out there (see below and the Asics ad earlier on the blog). Rather than creating a pale imitation of these I think I'll try to develop my look down a different stylised route.

Origami Stop Motion

One of the themes in my proposed narrative is the power of stories and the written word. One way to illustrate this through animation is to show pages of text literally coming to life. I was inspired by the Asics ad posted previously () and my stop motion tests to try some origami-based animation. The animation itself wasn't overly successful (more inbetweens needed as much of the motion is getting lost) but I'm keen to explore this avenue further.

Look Development: Asics Ad

I was taking a break from working to watch Real Madrid vs Barcelona in the Champion's League (incidentally the sending off was a disgrace!) and saw a really interesting Asics advert. A quick you tube search didn't bring it up, but I did find the ad below instead.

This is really interesting with reference to the paper world in my script that Margarita creates for herself and the writer. The stop motion approach isn't really relevant but the style could influence how I think about modelling my paper environment. Also, some of the environments are beautifully lit and framed. I've still not really locked down a look for my environments yet so it's good to have images like these ones to think about.

Paper Art - Characters

My Margarita character will be made from the pages of books so I've started looking at some real paper sculpture in order to get some ideas for both the style of character design and also for how to get this effect working in 3D.

The two artists shown have very different approachs. ....

Bert Simons uses photography to create eerily realistic heads from paper. This is almost the opposite of what I want to do: he's making paper look like skin where I'm aiming to make skin look like paper.

His approach is interesting though: it has parallels with CG modelling in that he's used connected 2D polygons to create a 3D shape. If I think carefully about where 'seams' would occur perhaps I can use a more stylised version of this technique when creating Margarita

Sher Christopher takes a totally different approach. Her lovely characters are very stylised, and the characteristics of paper as a material have a huge influence on the structure and appearance of her sculptures. I'm very keen to avoid either of my characters looking like toys so I'd steer away from anything so schematic but the particular way that Sher uses her material has really got me thinking

Paper Art - Environment

Su Blackwell:

Chatsworth, Derbyshure ‘A Guide to’

Elodole

St Pauls

Su Blackwell

The Old House

Su Blackwell

Wuthering Heights

I love these examples of paper art by Su Blackwell and Elodole and this is the kind of look that I'd like to capture in CG.

Whilst quite intricate there's still a simplicity to the forms with the detail and beauty coming from the material itself.

Also, these show how beautifully light and paper can interact. The slight translucency of paper means that lovely effects are created when it's back-lit.

From a practical point of view I think this means that I'll need to investigate sub-surface scattering to get the look of back-lit paper to work.

Finally, Su Blackwell's work tends to incorporate books themselves into the artwork. Having looked at her work I'm thinking about whether this is something to include in my environment concepts in some form.

Research Poster

I've had fun making this poster

Passionate Dialogue

I was introduced to Jan Švankmajer by a psychiatrist rather than an animator and, in keeping with this, what I love about this film is the brilliant portrayal of human emotion.

It is an example of the medium and the message being perfectly in tune. 

Švankmajer conveys sexual passion brilliantly. Through his inspired use of claymation he captures the sensation of losing track of the boundaries between your individual bodies, the moments of clarity that punctuate this and the feeling that your body has taken over and is expressing a more primitive drive, pushing your rational self to the side whilst it does so.

Similarly the animation captures the essence of the anger between the lovers as they, both literally & metaphorically, tear each other apart.

The beauty of animation is is ability to stylise or exaggerate its subject matter, to portray the impossible. Švankmajer shows that this doesn't mean animation has to be escapist, for children, or comedic. Used well, animation can convey truths about the human condition in a deeply profound way.

JoJo in the Stars by Marc Craste

I presented this film at a Context and Review session to talk about techniques for creating mood. This film does this in so many ways, from the haunting music deployed whenever the hero and JoJo are together to the monolithic overpowering nature of the environments.

Some brief thoughts on how this works are below:


Environment design: buildings and interiors are huge and monolithic. More like soviet architecture than a place for fun. Characters are dwarfed by the strong vertical lines, and later on these verticals reoccur as bars that constrain the performers. Overall we are given a sense of foreboding and powerlessness. Then when the hero is with JoJo they appear to be literally transported into the stars in an environment that resembles a nursery mobile. Perhaps this symbolises love's power to transport us away from life's everyday concerns, and give us a more innocent idealistic outlook.

B&W: the use of black and white gives a period feel, creating a sense of nostalgia. the strong lines and lighting work well with black and white photography and these combine to give a noirish eerieness to the whole thing

Leni Riefenstahl: some of the cinematography reminded my of work by Leni Riefenstahl - a talented  filmmaker whose reputation was tarnished by her links to the 3rd Reich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl). This certainly helps create a mood of oppression and fear. Sometimes I think that we see links that were never explicitly in the mind of the author of a piece of work . . . and I'm fairly sure that Marc Craste wouldn't cite Riefenstahl as an inspiration. But some shots reminded me of her work so there you go.

Weather: the weather also influences the mood. Ominous clouds gather as the audience congregates, portending tragedy: and when the hero makes his rescue attempt the wind is blowing a storm both symbolising and contributing to the tragedy that follows.

Title cards: I love the use of title cards. Again they give the whole piece a retro and yet somehow timeless quality, and for me they are reminiscent of both silent movies and also fairground posters. I think that they prime the viewer to enter a stylised and somewhat fanciful world.