Drunk with Power

CityScape

2009-02-28T19:12:00.006Z

A little experiment, about an hour to mock this one up. Still uncertain about layout design for shots of the city, created this washy approach as a test for this part of the film. Needs more detail/contrast, this one's probably about half complete, but its conveniently simple and wouldn't take much time to colour a bunch of layouts this way.

EDIT: Continued work on this image, bigger palette, more detail. Still not happy wiff eet.

EDIT The Second: Small adjustments to lighting, we'll call this good enough

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Pub!

2009-02-15T22:31:00.003Z

Last one of these I'll post for a while, got some serious amounts of animating to be decimated, so colouring layouts moves lower in the order of things. Pleased with this one, took too long and my eyes are bleeding, but it'll do.

Debris from ceiling will be animated to floor in case anyone wonders where all the ceiling went.

Opening Sequence Layouts

2009-02-05T21:32:00.003Z

Figured I'd post these now before I call them complete, just in case I've missed anything. Conveniently, the opening 30 seconds of my film only require these 3 layouts plus the other from my last post; here's where they're at.

The coherence of the lighting needs to be addressed, the top image is definately too bright compared to the first (in previous blog). Also, the doorway in the second image will be brightened, though I like the contrast it creates. Lastly, the top layer of paper in the stack is different between the two bottom images, I'll fix this too.

AND, I need to put something on the newspaper to make it a newspaper. Otherwise its just a stack of paper. Which is bad. Yeah.

Refined Aesthetic

2009-02-01T17:18:00.003Z

A little work in progress image, the film's first shot digitally painted. As previously mentioned, my approach to layouts will depend on their place in the story i.e. as it unfolds, their design will reflect its intensity.

In this case, the atmosphere is pretty mundane. The lead character will be lying almost dead central in the frame, looking pretty worse for wear. Small details still need to be added, such as decorating posters on the walls and defining edges, but these can wait for the moment. Hopefully the time required to produce these images will balance itself with other layouts simpler graphic approach as demonstrated in my previous post.

Graphic Aesthetic Experiments

2009-01-25T21:25:00.004Z

This pair of images are small tests, experimenting with graphic stylisation in my coloured layouts. The images themselves are not layouts from the film, but were mocked up so that I could clarify colour, texture and composition. As my film progresses I will create layouts that compliment the story through colour and style, using this to emphasise the plot.

Obviously, this is a stylised impression of scenes occuring in the sky. Because of the long focal distance in some shots, I want the layouts to retain interest and create a good sense of scale. Clouds will be paralaxed, though only slowly so as not to disrupt the composition.

This lineart for this image was created pretty quickly, so doesn't have the final layouts level of detail. Also, the perspective's pretty broken, it looks like something from Blade Runner and the composition's sloppy, but stylistically, I'm pretty happy with it! Masking lineart in photoshop means it can be coloured to compliment its contents, something I may use on animated elements if time permits.

More Cel Shading

2009-01-24T00:37:00.003Z

Further character pose experiments, trying to emphasize perspective but keep everything relatively under control. Colour mock up for fun, lighting boundaries marked on pencil drawing before scanning, makes painting more straight forward.

Cel Shading

2009-01-21T21:57:00.003Z

One possible method for colouring frames, pleased with result but realistically far too time consuming. Colour pallet is preliminary, although I quite like it. Will attempt some vector based fills next, hopefully will eliminate work time. Lighting in images is pretty dynamic, won't always be so melodramatic. Colours in layouts may also effect overall hue.

Our Hero Develops...

2009-01-20T21:08:00.006Z

Further design ideas for lead character; slowly but surely this is nearing completion.

The images above are based loosely on the character's design from my animatic, but anatomical adjustments have been made. Now he has a forehead!

Decided fairly quickly that I'm going to lose the crazy hair, mainly due to its lack of form and demanding need for secondary actions. As a result he's been left bald - still considering a beard and bedhead combo.

Studying form lead to another possiblity, giving him a mask, The Phantom style. These designs are much closer to what I've aimed for, flexible but solidly constructed. A little concerned he may be losing his hungover edge, but hoping he acheives a hybrid animation/comic aesthetic.

Secondary Character Scribblings

2009-01-16T21:40:00.004Z

Although I was initially uncertain about their suitability in the finished animation, the secondary characters featured in the animatic may not need to be replaced. Generally, they've received positive feedback, despite simply being blobs with smiley faces. So long as they retain a look that doesn't disrupt the aesthetic of the rest of the animation, I'll leave them as they are, but this may require foreshadowing e.g. in pictures in the newspaper article.

Here's a couple of sketchbook pages experimenting with said emoticon-esque persons. The colour test on the second page is only preliminary; in retrospect I'm adverse to giving them garish yellow faces.

One major advantage to this overly simplified/stylized design is that it'll allow me to animate a large number of these characters in a much shorter amount of time than something more complex. Considering they'll be in small crowds, this is very useful.

Character Development

2009-01-16T17:45:00.010Z

This post is comprised of a number of pages from my working sketchbook, illustrating the development of my films lead character. I'm not entirely happy with his appearence in the animatic, although as it has progressed, so has his design.

My main concern is to keep him appealing while ensuring his design is solid i.e. does not change drastically as the film progresses. However, this doesn't mean I want to create something completely prescriptive, but more a design based on readable forms and construction.

I've left page annotations on the images because they save some explanation, although there's a lot of left over rubbish.

After looking at Heroes for visual influence, I studied their characteristic eyes.

Having established a number of general principles for draughting the eyes, I turned my attention to the construction of the head itself, attempting to keep it as simple as possible to increase its ease in drawing. An influence from animation of the 1950's encouraged this.

Although I liked the way these designs were developing, paying more attention to accentuating perspective and simplicity, they consequently began looking very simlar to Samurai Jack. Likewise, I thought the overall appearence was looking too rigid, almost anime esque i.e. I wasn't having fun.

This became increasingly apparent.

The design was becoming too flat, with features that appeared stuck onto the construction rather than being a part of it. The effect makes the character look like something from Thomas the Tank Engine.

Because of this I have considered the overall structure of the face from a more anatomical stand-point in order to reduce this effect. Although it may initially complicate the design, I'm hoping that it will allow me to compromise with something functional, but versatile and funny.

This has also allowed me to tackle another part of the design that had confused me - the chin. From studying the skull, I can now render a mighty chin worthy of any superhero.

My epic character design journey continues...

Preliminary Animatic

2008-12-30T22:54:00.005Z

Drunk With Power - Preliminary Animatic by Robin Brindle from Rob on Vimeo.

Better late than never, here's a copy of my animatic as it stood about 2 weeks ago.
Soundtrack, dialogue and effects are placeholders to be replaced in the near future.
Likewise, character/location designs are not final.

Hopefully this will the first in a progression of videos as my animatic and subsequent animation are completed over the coming weeks.

Placeholder music Copyright Pearl Jam, Type O Negative and Test Switch Isolator (repsectively).

"Heroes" Eyes

2008-12-29T13:34:00.011Z

A small observation thats been great for developing my film's lead character is the significance of eyes in anything associated with superheroes, whether in Western/Eastern animation, comic books or television.

I call it the Peter Petrelli face and anyone who's familiar with US tv show Heroes will know what I mean.

This is Peter Petrelli.

The second image is Peter's anti-hero alter ego from the future. We know he's from the future because he has a scar on his face and gets angry a lot. Still the same face though.

Other characters use it too, a kind of angry, confused, constantly-furrowed eyebrow.

"HRG" (Anti-Hero)

"Linderman" (Evil)

"Sylar" (Evil)

These eyes are great for expressing a wealth of emotions in a single glare; anger, confusion, intention etc. Similarly, the wider the eye is opened the more wild a stare becomes. This is great for making a character seem out of place, confused or insane, though sinister characters tend to keep theirs more tightly closed.

Sometimes the eyes go a little out of control.

Great reference for character expression and emotion because its already hilarious.

This expression appears in anime/manga as well. From it we can gauge a character clearly means business, but variations on the shape of the brow tell us what buisness i.e. good or evil.

Shohen Jump's Naruto for example:

Good.

Evil.

Crazy Evil.

Predominently, a longer thinner eye denotes a more sinister character, thus the wider the eye, the more we associate them with good, or at least confusion. This is apparent in the cast of Heroes too. Compare evil character Sylar's eyes to good guy Peter's. There's a big, symbolic difference, one that I hope to make use of in the unforgivingly near future.

Inspiration Continues

2008-12-06T16:25:00.020Z

Now that my animatic is beginning to take shape, I have realised the importance of understanding the effect visual style will have on both my film's impact and its strength. Essentially, careful design and planning will ensure that my characters are able to perform wanted actions within their environments and are not restricted by either limited design or poorly constructed set pieces. I was inspired to write this entry after reading John K's recent blog posts on the subject of "solid drawing", which can be found here: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/.

My initial research into comic book illustration and design left me perplexed as to how this aesthetic may be translated to animation. During the 1960's, this was tried with many famous superheroes, albeit with hilarious results.

Mighty Thor(1966) :

Iron Man (1966):

The Hulk (1966):

As massively limited animations disguised by flashy visual effects, these adaptations are not much different to an actual animatic. There are loads of examples of this type of super limited animation for comic book adaptations that were limited either by budget or the impossible task of making their characters move convinicingly in 3D space. These designs are occaisionally so obsessed with 'realism' that the animation becomes stiff and ironically far less life like. The unpredictable lines that make up the 3d forms of the character's grotesquely detailed anatomy are restricted to simply moving around the screen rather than metamorphosising. Lines of action are lost, squash and stretch becomes too 'cartoony' and characters are made to look like manakins. This trend didn't go away.

He-Man (1983):

X-Men (1992):

(Xmen had possibly the greatest cartoon theme music ever.)

Loonatics (2005):

Sure enough the animation quality improved over time, but arguably only because of the technology behind it. As the technolgy improved, so did the flashy visual effects. Fundamentally, many of the shows like those above are limited by their character designs. In Loonatics Unleased for example, although the models are slightly more dynamic, the character's faces only seem to exist at any one of three angles - front, 3/4 or side. All 177 degrees between these angles are sullied by the design's lack of 3D clarity as illustrations, so really this is no different to the limited animation comic adaptations of the 1960's.

The irony of it all is that a decade before, during the 1950's, animation purposefully adapted to this type of 'limited' aesthetic, but much more intelligently, where modern art became a major influence. This design focussed aesthetic really appeals to me because the animation becomes more of a collage than a series of drawings and draws attention to the medium itself, so can be both charming or abstract.

These concept illustrations for Disney's 101 Dalmations (1961) disregard geometric concepts to purposefully create images that break drawing principles, such as perspective and form, but in doing so draw attention to the idea itself, allowing the viewer to enjoy translating these bizarre images. Colours are also very carefully selected and restricted to a fitting palette that doesn't detract from the mood of the image, or seem obscure. To me, the best part of it all is that this rule breaking was completely intentional and not the result of poor design or construction. This allowed the animators much more freedom to experiment and create dynamic characters and actions, unlike in Loonatics.

Several contemporary superhero cartoons have made great use of this aesthetic, such as in these layout design's for Samurai Jack (2001) by painter Lou Romano.

Or for concept work in The Incredibles (2004).

I love how the chaotic nature of the images from Samurai Jack really emphasise the dreadful monolithic structures on which they focus, distorted, jagged and threatening, with loud, but limited colours that grab attention. Similarly, these concept images from the Incredibles effortlessly translate ideas to an observer in a glance, without the need for extreme detail.

In the end, this idea for an aesthetic may only apply to my layout designs and not to characters, but this is still undecided. As this week progresses I hope to upload some experiments with these ideas in order to finalize both my film's visual style and designs.

Inspiration

2008-11-16T21:05:00.019Z

Now that my film's screenplay is finalized, I have begun to consider its aesthetic. My stories focus on superheroes makes comic books a decent place to start, or at least ot gather ideas.

Its probably worth noting for the record that I'm not a great fan of comics/superheroes etc, but the idea to create a film based on this genre came more from wanting to show its rediculousness as a theme.

Basically, this sorta stuff has me in stitches.

Currently, I'm reading Alan Moore's Watchmen in order to understand more about the genre. Lucky for me, the graphic novel supposedly "revolutionised" comic books by defining a much more realistic approach to the genre, something I have attempted to relate to in my screenplay.

Visually, I'm really impressed by the novels clever use of colour to emphasize the sickly, neon lighting that fills most cities.

Panels are filled with large amounts of dynamic light and shade to emphasise the action and the scene's atmosphere. Character poses can be read even on a small scale due to their strong silhouettes. Awesome.

Although this style can be easily read, its hard to say if it would translate well to animation without the aesthetic becoming too "anime".

Speaking of which, Katsuhiros Otomo's Akira is loaded with great, dynamic character poses and visual effects.

Like Watchmen, colours are often massively over-saturated, but here only during scenes of intense action. I guess that way, the film's 1½ hr screen time won't melt a viewers eyeballs.

Plus, anti-hero Tetsuo wears a cape for the latter part of the film. Although iconic to superheroes, a previous attempt to animate a cape was insanely time consuming, and may be out of the question.

Conversely, John K's Ren and Stimpy contains my favourite superhero character, "Powdered toast Man". He doesn't wear a cape.

I love the character's rediculous, overly-macho appearence. His poses have strong lines of action that really help accentuate visual gags, but his form remains consistent, so that action isn't unreadable. Plus, his head's made from two slices of toast.

Each frame is really carefully inked, in so far that it helps describe form and perspective. Some outline's colours also correspond to their parent, like his tongue.

Although I want my story to be "believable", that doesn't mean it'll be visually realistic. I'd much prefer to create something either cartoony or abstract than to mimic reality.

Why?