Line Boil as a design aesthetic, the importance of detail and movement in the scene.

Line Boil is the noticeable wobble of lines as a result of drawing frames for a piece of animation. While initially seen as a mistake by some animation purists, over time animators have made it an aesthetic of their animations. Line boil is often used to give the illusion of movement where there is none to avoid the freezing effect that comes when an animated drawing ceases to move.

For my animation I have chosen to make this sort of excessive line boil a part of my animation's aesthetic in order to retain a hand drawn style and emulate classic Bob Godfrey animation 'Roobarb'. In Roobarb, the linework gives the animation a feeling of perpetual motion, making characters appear more energetic and separating it from other childrens animations at the time. I felt that in order to address concerns I had with my previous animation regarding a perceived lack of motion in the scene, implementing line boil would be an effective way of ensuring characters appeared to have some semblance of life to them. This is a principle that 3D animation takes to heart, as it is important that to truly sell the idea to the audience that a 3D model is in fact a living breathing character, there must be some sort of movement on the character at all times, whether this be a secondary or overlapping action, hair blowing in the breeze or a character blinking or adjusting their eyes. This is something I have taken on board when animating my characters as I feel that adding small details such as the scarf blowing in the breeze and the glasses falling down our character's face add a sense of authenticity.

Another aspect of the animation I have paid particular attention to is the movement and composition of the scene. I was inspired primarily by a video essay (linked above) highlighting director Akira Kurosawa's use of movement in a scene to emphasise character emotion and create richly dense cinematography.  In order to counter a sense of stillness in my animation I made weather effects an important element of the composition. Leaves blowing past the camera feature in most of the shots in my animation as a way of depicting a change in emotion in the scene as well as to show, for the audience, placement of characters in a scene. For example, when we cut to the girl peeking over the fence, the leaves are blowing in the opposite direction to where they were blowing in the shot of the boy facing her direction, implying that they are parallel to each other in the scene. The wind also intensifies when the boy glimpses the girl over the fence, as emphasised by the wind intensifying on the scarf and the boy's glasses falling down his face. This sort of attention to detail in the mise en scene is something I wish to build upon and develop in future animations.

Defining the visual aesthetic and finalising character designs

One of the aims of this brief for me was to pay homage to the visual aesthetic of one of my favourite illustrators, Don Kenn, in an animation that captures the mood of his pieces in the context of an animation. It was important to me that defining visual aspects of his work, such as the texture and intricacies of the linework make it in to the final animation. In order to maintain the 'handmade feel' I also plan on employing line boil to the characters to give the illusion of constant motion and life and not just a static image. Texture can be accomplished by giving the image on screen a slight yellowish tint as Kenn is known to work on yellowish post-it notes for his drawings. More than merely emulating the visual style, this mean't juxtaposing the innocent and childlike with the horrific and otherworldly, something Kenn does in his illustrations brilliantly.

I created this image in photoshop using pre-existing character and background assets shortly before starting production on my animation to use as reference for what I wanted the overall aesthetic of the animation to be. Though not entirely a direct emulation of Kenn's style I feel I have effectively merged elements of that design aesthetic with my own to create an effective and unique style for my animation.

Characters:

Boy

The design of my main boy character was heavily inspired by the character of Sam from Wes Anderson's 2012 film 'Moonrise Kingdom'. I was very impressed by the child actor's performance in that film, with my main takeaway from the character was the thick-rimmed glasses. These were included in my design in the later stages of development for my characters, but I feel the addition of glasses makes the design more childlike and allows for more expression to be conveyed through the face, which is important, as there is no dialogue in my animation. My design does differ slightly from Wes Anderson's character with the inclusion of freckles, longer hair and winter clothing as opposed to Sam's scout outfit.

Girl

The design for the girl character in my animation is supposed to reflect elements of the boy character's design with a few modifications. Both characters wear wooly hats with a bobble and a scarf which blows in the wind. The facial structure and tonal schemes of both of the characters are also the same to convey a sense of belonging and show a potential connection between the two characters visually.

As with the design of the boy character I took some design cues from another character from the film Moonrise Kingdom, specifically Suzy, the female lead, though to a lesser extent than with the other design. Elements I borrowed from this character include the shape and prominence of the eyebrows as well as the shape of the hair, though most of the other design decisions were made to reflect and parallel elements of my boy character's design. (For example, the mole on her cheek was designed to parallel the freckles on the boy's face.)

Monster

The design for my monster was inspired by the creature designs of director Guillermo Del Toro and illustrator Don Kenn. A common motif with both artists is the Lovecraftian, with both drawing influence from the work of H. P Lovecraft with the use of tentacles and distorted proportions. While my design takes more inspiration from the style of Kenn, I did find Del Toros sketches a helpful source of inspiration of creating disturbing imagery.

One of the main design aspects behind the design of the creature in my animation was the lure on the monster's head which resembled the fleshy growth which an Angler fish uses to lure it's prey. 

Compositing in After Effects

For the animation I have been working on in response to the studio brief: The Other Side I have made an effort to composite the shots used for my animation in Adobe After Effects. After Effect's wide variety of tools allow me more room experiment with camera movement, effects and more fluid motion in my animation. It also makes the process of composing a scene all the more easier as assets can be imported and organised onto layers with ease and changed around without much trouble.

Motion blur is one of the main features that attracted me to After Effects for this project as I wanted my animation to have more fluid movement and a slightly more filmic aesthetic. These effects also give the image more depth as it allows me to perform focus pulls with After Effect's camera blur settings. One of the shots I am most proud of in my animation, the first one I created to act as a template/vertical slice for the rest of the shots in the animation, uses a dolly zoom shot to show the boy reacting to seeing the girl for the first time. This effect would have been difficult to achieve if I had been animating solely in Photoshop as I had in previous projects, as the camera movement would have likely been more jerky and less smooth. Thanks to After Effect's Easy Ease (In/Out) options, the camera movements feel fluid and flow with the animation. Pair that with a faint motion blur and it really lends to the aesthetic, making for a more filmic and cinematic animation.

Feedback from Interim Crit

After presenting the idea for my animation to my class I received formative feedback from my tutors and peers which I will review over the course of developing my work. A lot of the feedback I received was positive, with respondents reacting positively to the proposed art style, highlighting the use of linework to reflect texture, drawing welcome comparisons to artists such as Don Kenn and Edward Gorey, both of whom I used for inspiration. Praise was also given to the explanation I gave for how I was to manage workflow for this project. My proposed method of workflow is to create the keyframes for the characters on paper and then scan them into the computer, drawing the inbetweens digitally and adding colour and texture using Photoshop's video layers. Then after the frame-by-frame character animation is done I will composite all the individual design elements, such as backgrounds and props, in Adobe After Effects where I will animate camera movement, the movement of elements within a scene and make any changes to colour or tone, ensuring the final product is as close to the style model sheet I developed.

My tutors also proposed changes and modifications in order to propertly communicate my narrative. One such suggestion was the inclusion of a needle scratch to punctuate the punchline of the animation, however I argued that I felt this inclusion of non-diegetic sound would not be properly justified and ultimately detract from the humour of the animation, as the humour is routed in the ironic juxtaposition of the pleasant soundtrack with the horrifying visuals. Similarly the tutors questioned the abruptness of the ending, which I defended for similar reasons. The pacing of the animation is deliberately slow in the beginning as to emphasise the sudden shift to the more fast paced editing style that makes up the last 5 seconds of the animation.