Week 10! Proof of Concept

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Hello blog!!

Tomorrow my proof of concept shot is due -- so this past week I had fun taking a break from animation by doing... everything else! (except sound)

I'm pretty happy with how the animation is turning out, but I'm a little stumped on backgrounds.

I think over winter break, when I'm away from my workstation in the lab, I'm going to really try to nail down the look of my film because so far something is not quite clicking.

I painted backgrounds for a game two summers ago while I was working at Psyop, and while I was there I really got into the groove of spending 8 hours a day cranking out summer-camp-themed backgrounds. I had time to fine-tune all my colors and the mood felt consistent throughout. I think it was easy to hit my stride while I was there because literally all I was doing that summer was backgrounds. (Including a couple below).




 I think because of the scratchy line-quality in my film, I need to add some slight outlines to my backgrounds. I'm using Kevin Dart's style as a big influence; I like how he uses simple painterly strokes to gesture an entire lamppost, or tree trunk. He's also got an amazing sense of light and color. I think I will study his work more closely and do some more studies of Florentine streets from my photos from a year ago.

Kevin Dart background from the Mickey Shorts. I like the subtlety of color and tones here. The low saturation is very appealing.

I'm also going to be closely referencing a lot of Gobelins films: In-Between, MEMO, Thermostat 6 are some Gobelins films that I think are beautiful and have been a huge influence on my sensibilities and at least the look that I hope to emulate. 

MEMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGGpsbN55A
In-Between: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xp22IYL2uU
Thermostat 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Hz_gdqS1k&t=66s

Anyway, backgrounds are going to take the back-seat for now and be a higher priority next semester! Got to finish animating first.

This week, I need to book the ADR room to record some dialogue with my new actor for Maurizio (the angry lawyer character who has some of the only dialogue). I want to start looking into sound designers, I'm having coffee with my composer on Thursday, and hopefully I can squeeze in my schedule shots-to-be-animated AND reboard my first scene (which I didn't get to last week). Let's not mention the paper for my Italian class, pitch for storyboarding (and the boards themselves...), and the character design commissions that are starting to gather a little dust in the back of my mind. 

Mi serve un caffè...

Here's my proof of concept!



And here it is again with my first pass on the background...I didn't like the layout but I think the colors might be better? Argh. Looking forward to crit on Tuesday.




Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 22, 2018 at 6:16 PM

    Beautiful proof of concept! The backgrounds posted here are stunning. I could see getting sucked into spending hours on them. It is wise to save them for later. Good work Margaret! Good luck on the recording session.

    ReplyDelete

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