ignla

[ignla]

FMP

Sound-

I had a lot of problems with getting the sound to fit in the timeline (and more with importing them into premiere pro to begin with.Pink sounds almost carefree as she isn't being actively threatened by death as nothing wants her dead, it's the reason I had Orn sound sarcastic and frustrated when he told her to jump. He feels she's still taking this too seriously when She could end up losing half her personality if she and Blue don't merge in time. I actually had to remove the "Bye" (it was also make her come across as unfeeling for Blue's plight, it was too upbeat) part that Pink says as she falls from the window because it kept on running into the next scene, and once I'd fixed that it just made the tone jump oddly because she sounded so cheerful and then the monster was screeching in the background. I voice acted for everyone but I had planned to get one of my parents to voice act for it since a lot of my anxiety came from not pleasing them when I was young (like most kids). However, I instead went with me voicing it because when you repeat things said to you later, you are thinking it too yourself and even twisting it to be worse. Everyone else is meant to sound like me anyway, Pink and Blue as literal representations of me, Orn my subconscious trying to fix us and Myse is my doubt in myself. This would have been heard originally as seen in the script ( Myse: Huh, he actually made it) but I had to cut everything but the 'huh' as the shot was awkward as it hung on to finish the sentence (if I'd animated it like I had Pinks, the shot could have worked with me playing the three frames over and just zooming in to add a bit more to it as the audio played). Since I'm nowhere near a professional voice actor I feel that the sound versions quality drops as an overall experience. I only left it in because I put so much work into finding out how to animate mouths and even changed the assistants designs based on wanting to animate them talking (which didn't even pan out for Myse as I had her sleeves cover her mouth). If I had to do it better I'd get people who could voice act to do it for me or maybe I should have gotten voice acting classes. Also the way I edited the sound was choppy in places I should have used the keyframes to fade out the sound.

 

The stop motion uncorrupted-

How ironic that the part were she's whole again is when the animation corrupts ( thanks Premiere Pro).

[ignla]

FMP-

Silent-

[ignla]

In the end I'm glad I turned to using a digital pencil. I feel that the style I used wouldn't have looked as good if coloured. Me redrawing every frame while being rather free with the fluidity of the lines helped create an illusion of movement.

I also had to research what type of mouth movement you would get when speaking hopefully It comes out alright.

Compared to my older work I'm happy I pushed myself to have the characters talking visible as opposed to me just flashing the text on the screen with the characters expression like I did in the momento project.

[ignla]

I'd practiced some stop motion and I had my storyboard. The problem was that everything in this section (from the creation of Purple to the storyboard) I did in a digital medium so I had to choose which traditional one out of the equipment I had to use. I did consider coloring it but then decided not to because when I started out drawing I didn't color them in. I started with paint because I was pretty sure I didn't want to use it and I was right, it would be too messy and a hassle to keep accurate. So I knocked out watercolor while I was at it as well-same issue for me. Then I tried ink because I thought it would be easier to control, struck it out I as I couldn't be as precise with a paint brush (I didn't have any ink pens at home) so I stopped half way. I liked how it looked however. I then used a fine tip pen, how sharp it came out was nice and the shading would be fine to use but I didn't appreciate the fact I wouldn't be able to rub it out and making a mistake would cost me time (same problem for paint and ink now that I think about it). The Graphic crayon I considered using but the size of it was an issue, the look of it was good though, expecially when I layered it over each other. Pencil was what I was going to end up defaulting to when I thought of at least getting some color in and so I decided to use color pencils (plus the color pencil didn't feel as crispy against the paper).

[ignla]

The lighting in all of Blue's scenes was inspired by a shot I saw in the movie 'Greenland'.

I loved how the light was bouncing around off the various light sources and setting him aglow. I did consider making it dark out but then I realised I'd be getting moonlight bouncing off of Blue as their is no artificial lighting in the cathedral I've drawn, and so it would have the same warm tone to match his hair and skin.

[ignla]

I got the idea for this shot from this renaissance painting 'Woman at a Window' by Caspar David Friedrich. (I was recommended to look at these kinds of imagery during lesson) What I like about this is that we can't see the woman's face so its not so easy to tell what she's feeling while gazing out the window. Is she unable to leave that house or waiting for someone perhaps? Or is she trapped like a bird in a cage that I liken Pink and Blue?

At first I was going to do Pink's side of the narrative in color but I just didn't like how it turned out. I felt like the colors looked too washed out with each other especially because I wanted her side to have less detailed everything compared to Blue. So I decided that her story would be portrayed by earlier art skills, just the pencil.

[ignla]

For this shot of Blue, when I completed my keyframes and played them back it looked stilleted (while it was just keyframes it still didn't look right). So I made the part that stalled near the beginning into a panicked stumble as he ran from his monster. Then a burst of speed as he springs up from his miss fire. In the end I was happy it looked wrong before as it gave me a chance to add more character to his running.

[ignla]

Storyboard for Pink and Blue-

Script-

Pink: A faster way down would be nice.

Orn: Might as well jump then.

Pink: *gasp* You know what! You right!

Orn: Great.

Orn: Wait. What!

Pink: Bye!

Pink: Blue!

Myse: Huh, he actually made it...

[ignla]

The castle/Cathedral is designed this way because Pink has to descend to the bottom of her tower (her comfortable if meaningless life) to reach him. Her monster waits at the bottom to stop her. He has to fight his way to the top from the bottom his monster already antagonising him with harsh remarks that echo the area as soon as he leaves his room ( another visual that everything wants him dead so Purple can become a model daughter). he's at the bottom most floor and her the top to reference how unbalanced Purple has become as a person the white tower barely held up on a pillar that would knock over in a one hit and the black tower digging into the earth trying it's best to support it.

For the shape of the windows I used the ones at Saint Paul's as a reference as I noticed them when I was searching up Yoko Ono's work.

[ignla]

I then did character line up. I ended up using it to look at the designs and make sure I was happy with them. I wasn't completely content so I made change as I lined them up.

Orn's colour scheme ended up with darker colors than before and I went with the dark sclera in the end.

Myse I made wear a variation from the nun uniform I was going to put her in because of the cathedral the narrative takes place in. I changed it because she ended up looking very formless in it.

I took out the gradient in Puples hair and just put a little in the back compared to before.

Pink's hair changed because I wanted to distinguish the twins a little more than just their clothing color. Also because I really wanted straight hair as a kid.

Blue's the only one who didn't really change just a bit of color correction in the hair and clothes (pink got that treatment too).

[ignla]

I wanted them to have assistants in their endeavour to get to each other so I designed some (or should I say redesigned some of the earlier characters I'd made).

Orn-

I started out with curves and sharp edges for his shape. He mostly ended up looking the same I just made him less pale. I tried making him more human (basically what he would look like if not corrupted) to balance out with Myse being antagonistic assistant but ultimately decided I liked the idea that he looked less human but acted more humane tha Myse did. I considered making him look more demonic with the darker skin tone but decided to hit a middle ground with the skin being lighter but purple in places to signify the curroption spreading through him (I'm still not sure about his eye whites, if they should be dark or not). I got rid of two of his fingers so he could fit with the monster and it had the added bonus of not being as hard to draw. Yay.

Myse-

She's just the heart version (the rightmost one) of my shape drawings. Thus her being Blue's assistant, I redesigned her in the character line up.

[ignla]

The monster is akin to the evil smog that chases the main characters in the game 'Ico'. I wanted to make the monster like them because it hounds my main characters too, however I wanted it shapeless so I could draw it easier and colourful to fit the main characters. I don't plan for Pink's monster to actually show up sinse guards the last floor and I plan for her to jump from the top. So I showed the colors it would have.

[ignla]

When I got my pen back I went back to make changes on Pink, reflected her image and it made me think about what she would look like if I went with a male protagonist instead (there were magical girl anime with guys instead after all). That was how Blue came into existence (which lead me onto the story ideas I pitched under their designs in the previous post) after considering them being two parts of a whole that could transform into a different person at some part in the narrative. This idea was partially influenced by Sapphire and Ruby from 'Steven Universe' who then create Garnet a different identity of them merged together. However Blue and Pink are going to merge to create a balanced (girly girl and tomboy that they represent combined) Purple.

So Purple wields a drawing tablet because I want her to wake up to it in her hands after the conflict in her mind is resolved. She's the end scene and I want to animate it in stop motion as I want the jumpyness that comes with that style of animation. To show that just because Blue and Pink merged doesn't mean that she's perfect now and doesn't have room to improve ( just like how art is ever evolving).

[ignla]

I was stumped at the time as my pen went and broke. Since I couldn't draw until my replacement came in, I used the time to reconsider what narrative I was trying to tell as I didn't truly have one at that time just ideas on the transformation attire and character designs I kind of liked.

[ignla]

Character design-

Side charcter-

Orn.

I made Orn when listening to the soundtrack from 'PUPARIA' and trying to make an other worldly creature like the ones found in the video (especially the boy on the left). I really liked the colour design on them and the details in these shots the most so I tried to add more smaller details on Ron than I normally do with characters.

The main characters-

The background setting for this animation will be in a castle akin to a cathedral because I always fell asleep in church from young age to now. Thus Blue is being chased by the monster that is trying to entice him to sleep. It's also just trying to snuff him out all together akin to how my family wanted me to act less like my brothers and more like a conventional girl.

Pink on the other hand won't actively be chased by her monster. One of them need to live for the outer identity not to collapse on itself (now named Purple) and the mental state would prefer for it to be Blue that dissappeared as my family ( particularly this one aunt of mine) would always compare me to my convectually girly cousin. It didn't help that I had problems with always procrastinating and combined with my sleepyness (really low vitamin D) got me being called lazy all the time when really I was doing about the same amount of work as my brothers, but my family holds girls to a different standard. They are both wearing a more fantasy twist on my school uniform from primary school, specifically the summer dress (which I just put shorts onto for Blue and gave them both sleeves).

When making my main characters I didn't even have the idea for Blue to exist at first. It was just Pink and Orn. Pink didn't even exist yet when id first made Orn, just my first ideas for what my main character would look like transformed (left) and untransformed(right). In the end I scrapped the character kept orn and then created Pink (though she wasn't that colour yet). I did a animation test of of the small storyboard I'd made but I wasn't confident in where the idea was going.

[ignla]

Stopmotion

Holding the camera straight was a problem that I'd need to fix as it made the whole shot wonky and our of focus.

[ignla]

I decided to refresh myself on shot composition to clearly remember which would be better to invoke emotion in my audience with my animation.

I especially wanted to do so after watching SUNDOWN by GOBELINS, it made me certain that I should try to use more dynamic shots and angles like-

because they were really interesting to look at and helped keep me engaged as I watched.

So I drew 4 shots (wide to show the whole situation, close shot looking up at him to show he's in control here, down shot to show she isn't, over the shoulder shot where they would start talking) with a basic storyline of a sacrificial bride for some kind of demon King (she's not very impressed and he's smug), with 4 different color saturation, drawing pen type and thickness and lighting.

My favorite shots out of this would be the bottom two. As stated earlier I prefer lighter lining for my drawings (the down shot actually has colored lines) it's more simple, clean and shows the action in motion clearer. Whereas my lineless close up shot ended up a little messier as I made the characters up on the spot from the basic colored storyboard with little lines to follow, the lighting I liked on him but I should of kept the background yellow for more contrast.

The over the shoulder shot was there to show just how massive he was compared to her and continue showing how smug he was as they talk. I used difference for lighting effects again, on their hair then the whole shot as a whole to see if it would change how the shot felt again. It felt effective but I should of erased it where light was shining( all the teal outlining), duplicated it and used the effects add and gaussian blur to better depict the glow from the aquarium tank.