Editing Sound Clips
After the recording process we had roughly an hour of audio to work with for our animated documentaries. Split between the three of us, we each have around 40 seconds to work with, totalling in at around 2 minutes, the maximum amount of time allowed by the D&AD brief.
I decided I was going to use Alex's conversation as I felt it dealt with a lot of interesting motifs and imagery and that her general tone suited the format and aesthetic I was aspiring to fairly well. I imported the WAV file into Premier and started by cutting out all the filled pauses, stutter and questions in order to condense the sound clip down as much as possible. This totalled in at around 5 minutes. While editing, I rewatched parts of 'Innerviews' to get a feel for how the conversation should be arranged into a monologue, paying specific attention to the space in between sentences, making judgements as to how long a line of dialogue should be given to breathe in order to set a consistent pace.
I eventually settled on a few little snippets which I arranged in an order I felt told a sort of visual story...
'Some days it feels like you're speaking an entirely different language that other people don't understand or that y'know other people have a different language that I don't understand so...'
'Its kind of like being in your own bubble sometimes that people can't get into and you can't get out of'
'I quite like my own space, I like being alone, like its nice to know other people are there if you need them but I am someone who spends a lot of time on their own'
'It is like being on a different planet'
To lend to the calm and ethereal tone of Alex's voice I also searched for some royalty-free music licensed under creative commons to go alongside the audio clip. After searching the Free Music Archive for a while I came across an ambient artist called Podington Bear and his track 'Sad Cyclops' which I felt had a beautifully ethereal tone which fit perfectly.
Podington Bear: Sad Cyclops
Lastly, before starting production I emailed Alex to show her what we had done so far and to garner any feedback she might have. It was important to me that she be happy with the depiction, as discussing ones experiences with aspergers syndrome is a deeply personal thing to do and implies a certain level of trust in the filmmaker that they will do your testimony justice. Luckily her feedback was positive, which gave us the go ahead to properly start production.
Developing Ideas
When making an animated documentary based of the fairly personal conversations of a real person, one must consider how said person should be depicted in the documentary itself, whether the caricature should reflect the real life counterpart or be an entirely original creation. I chose to meet somewhere in the middle on this, basing elements of the character design off some of real-life Alex's attributes, but with subtle changes for the sake of privacy and artistic liberty.
Initial Ideas
My interpretation of Alex for the sake of this animation is very much based off how she comes across in the audio recordings, quiet, reserved, yet confidently cool. I was conscious not to make my character too child-like by giving them a large head, as Alex is at University and probably would prefer to be depicted as such. Theres also the fact the brief requires us to focus on Autism in adults for this stage of the campaign, so to counteract this I made the character a little lankier, while still retaining the large-ish, circular head. I tried to build the character's silhouette from primitives as much as possible, with either smooth or sharp edges.
Sketchbook poses
While developing the character's design I was also considering the aesthetic I would be using for the animation. I was torn between using a vector style and a style with prominent linework. However, in my experience, styles with more emphasis on primitive shapes tend to be served better by a style which emphasizes this characteristic.
Early character concepts
I created some character lineups to compare styles and designs against one another, gradually developing my design until it resembled something I was happy with. I settled on a primary colour scheme of blues and red, as they contrast really nicely, I felt, with the colour purple which I was planning on using for the background; as a group we decided fairly early on we would try stick to the colour scheme outlined in the brief's brand guidelines as closely as possible.
Final Character Lineup
I gave the character a few accessories, such as a messenger bag and a pair of headphones in reference to the real-life Alex, who showed up on the day of the interview with a messenger bag and pair of headphones around her neck. She also made clear her love of music in parts of the interview which sadly had to be cut due to time restraints, however a way around this I felt would be to show this aspect of her character visually in the design.
Concept Art
Next up, before starting on any storyboards, I drew up some concept art of visuals which I could use in the animation. Listening to the edited sound clip over and over again to get a feel for the mise en scene of this world. One moment which really stood out to me was the line comparing having aspergers syndrome to being on a different planet, which for me immediately conjured up imagery of a silhouetted figure standing on a grassy ball adrift in the vacuum of space. This image essentially lay the foundation for the visual motifs for the rest of the animation; separation from ones environment, with a beauty and appreciation for it as a passive observer.
For the backgrounds I drew significant inspiration from Genndy Tartakovsky's painterly backgrounds from Samurai Jack as well as the work of the artists at Cartoon Saloon, particularly on Song of the Sea. I'm a massive fan of Tartakovsky's visuals and have been using him as inspiration for a long time when it comes to painting backgrounds, and I felt his painterly digital style merged with Cartoon Saloon's emphasis on airbrushed foliage would be an ideal aesthetic for my animation to follow. I used some of Kyle T Webster's digital brushes to create the textured look of the backgrounds, using the pastel brushes for the broad-strokes (Moon, Hills, Bushes, Trees), the comic pen for the finer details (Grass, Fences, Twigs) and the grain brush to incorporate a sort of texture which gives the illusion of tangibility.
Tartakovsky's use of digital media to create painterly backgrounds is outlined in this behind the scenes video on Samurai Jack.
Rough Thumbnail Sketches
Due to the time restraints of this project, with the deadline being in just a few weeks and wanting to start animating as soon as possible, for the storyboards I created some quick rough thumbnails in my sketchbook; outlining the placement of object and characters in the scene and linking each scene to the next in a fairly simplistic way. While this is not ideal, they do serve a purpose to me in specifying how many individual unique assets have to be created and how to link them all together seamlessly in a visually appealing way.
More Thumbnail sketches
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