Animation Production Diary - Setting the Stage

In scene twelve our protagonist has just been swallowed wholly by the blackness and wakes to find herself under the harsh glare of a spotlight. The scene begins with us looking straight down on her as the spotlight comes on, it then tilts to bring her closer to us almost like serving her up on a plate.

Animation Production Diary - They need to look like lady hands

The action in scene ten involves a close up of the Melancholic Wife reaching up to try and bring a ghost with her as she is being pulled down. The ghost represents a positive memory of her teenage self, an instance not weighted down by the same troubles as her adult self, and the effort to carry it with her into the darkness is an attempt to accept this positive aspect fully into herself. As such I feel the movement needs to be gentle, soft and kind. She is not grabbing the ghost, she moves to embrace it and ask for her help.

For reference I took a video of my own hands but of course they need to look like a woman's hands so the theme of this scene was softness all round.

Hands

Ghost

Both together

Animation Production Diary - STOMP

A full introduction into the alternate reality of the dream space embodied in a large foot.

Animation Production Diary - The wind in her hair

Scene twenty two of the film,  the calm after the pyrotechnic storm was another scene I choose to tackle early. The Melancholic Wife's torso is stationary for the most part so it represented an opportunity to focus on animating a wave, a fundamental animation principle, in her hair. The flow of the movement is also a first exploration of animation timing for the film. I was able to achieve a balanced flow in the animatic and it is my hope and intention to carry this over as much as possible into the animated movement.

Animation Production Diary - Pulling the rug out from under

I decided early on to try and complete scene three from the animatic to inked stage ready for comping. I thought that this would support me to understood the process from start to finish as much as possible before beginning full production. The scene is about twenty seconds long as well so would represent a fair chunk of completed work. It also contains aspects of background, animation and pre-compositing.

The animation I'm sharing below is the follow up to the carpet growth, two arms reach across and pull the grown carpet up. In animating it my pre-occupation was to communicate the tension in the carpet as it's pulled up, the carpet fights back against the force of the hands until finally being ripped wholesale from the screen.

Personal Brand Identity Development

Further development of the business card focusing on the strength of the illustration image on its own with the underlying grid of rectangular shapes speaking to my work in comic books and delivering colour information.

Possible logo and letterhead designs, I hand lettered the typography based on a font from the IM Fell Types class of fonts.

Business Card Concepts

I have been working up some different concepts for my business card.

This is my previous card and I like the duality element conveyed by the mirrored faces, it illustrates for me the different roles that I can inhabit as an artist. So I would like to retain some element of this while bringing in an indicator of the new reality of pursuing animation roles. The image gives a sense of my style as an illustrator but does not indicate an idea of animation. 

When talking to John Sherwin he recommended exploring the use of colour, hand lettering and emphasising the style that my work contains.

Here are a few samples.

Artistic Influences - Paul Pope

Another artist who has been an influence on the direction of my work is the Paul Pope, an American comic artist. I love his use of line weight in brush work to convey movement, tone and emotion. His work has an inherent kinetic energy.

Artistic Influences - Jean Giraud

As an illustrator I have had a few influences on my style and it will be interesting to see how this translates from still imagery to images in motion.

I am a big fan of the French artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius. The aspects which I like to draw from his work include a real sense of weight and volume communicated in an expressive manner; attention to detail; and a potent sense of otherworldliness.

Animation Production Diary - How does your carpet grow?

Early on I identified for myself that Scene Two could be a quick gain in terms of production. It contained some tricky transitions too which would be good to solve early. One of those transitions is the growing of a carpet from a full black screen. I had the idea to create one instance of a carpet fibre growth then multiply it to produce a full floor.

 First Test

 Second Test - More fibres

Third test - ready to be multiplied in after effects.