ANIMATION PROCESS

Animating Backgrounds:

There are a couple scenes in my film where I try tried to recreate hand held point of view shots of the scenery moving. This hallway shot for instance, there was a point in the planning stage when I tested this out with After Effects:

Mostly playing around with camera angles and layer position points, however I don't really like the way the camera moves here, to adjust the movement will take time and more fiddling with the positions so I ended up leaving it and trying another method.

And so I came up with the idea of using train tracks as reference instead (using the turn of the tracks as a reference to how the walls would move): 

I did a mock up of this but the tone of the scene didn't really fit with the rest of the film, or at least the parts set in the present:

It makes sense for the flashback sequence to be a little over the top since it is basically the climax of the whole film, but this hallway scene is a lead up to the characters meeting so it should be more drawn out and slow in comparison.

 

 I ended up using the photoshop timeline bars since I have used it many times before (especially on this film). I drew out a long  pan shot of the side of the wall as the security guard walked along, creating the illusion of someone walking. Since he is holding a torch for this scene I thought it would be interesting to play around with shadows. It goes by quite quickly but in the beginning of this scene you can see the security guards shadow being casted on the wall: 

I have used this method to move many of the backgrounds behind the character, the walk sequence in the opening scene for instance uses the same method for the floor tiles:


Flashback Sequence:

The process is quite standard (animation & colour) but this aspect of the film has taken longer than expected, particularly the flashback sequence. I have been testing out colour schemes since I first started, however I didn't take into account the process of animating water.

Here is the full process for the flashback sequence:

I used a shot from Spirited Away as reference for the water movement but I have adapted it to the style I can work with, here's the rough:

I then did the lined animation, each colour being a different layer. Since the flashback don't have any outlines I coloured straight over it:

There is a shot in the flashback sequence that looks very rough, but thats because most of the clean up animation will be done in colour.

Tear Pan Sequence

This was a sequence I started in semester 1 but finished only recently. The line animation was quite simple and straightforward:

I used this water drop slow-mo video for reference.

The tear pattern was a little more complicated, I wanted to give it a hand drawn feel to this so for the tear pattern I made sure to do it all manually (drawn frame by frame with a slightly smaller brush for effect- hopefully it would be picked up on the big screen, if not, it's a personal touch thing):

The colour transition is a colour overlay on Photoshop so I only had to focus on the morphing of the tear.

A close up:

I started this sequence in January, but I finally finished it in April. Mostly due to me took  overthinking the different ways to draw the bubbles. I have to just do it, and test out the movement as I go, that's the best way to work with transition animation.

To be Continued:

I have spoken about this on my main development page. Right now, I am prioritising finishing the film first, once I have all the frames drawn out I plan on revisiting and tweaking a couple shots.

I will also be splitting my time accordingly, with the help of a couple colourists I have assembled I am hoping to get one scene coloured a day and one section animated per day. 

I need to colour some of my backgrounds on the side, I have the colour palette and most of these shots are close up shots so there won't be any more complex backgrounds to colour. Hopefully, this time next week I have the animation finished, most of the character colouring done and slowly building my film together.