This week we started arranging the quotes we gathered off the internet into something resembling a script. This was a much harder process than we had anticipated, as we had to construct a loose plot structure with a definable lead character from a selection of quotes, which would work in a documentary format. We printed out each of the quotes and began circling parts we felt could be use for our animation while discussing scenarios we could construct around them so that they'd make sense in the context of our mockumentary.
For example, a comment such as 'theres one thing worse than having 'no where to live' in Bradford and that's having to live in Bradford' would fit the profile of the character of Keith fairly well, as we could imagine him making such a comment flippantly while addressing the camera. We tried to highlight as many sentences and phrases as we could. As the point of Keith as a character is for him to represent the embodiment of ignorant, bigoted internet comments, we're writing the script so that its is only Keith's dialogue which is taken from these internet comments, as to really hammer the point of our mockumentary home. Secondary characters and the narrator will have their own written dialogue, but as Keith is the star and thus the point of our documentary, we're trying to keep secondary characters to a minimum. Luckily this focus on Keith exclusively also plays to the personality of the character himself, as in universe he is narcissistically making this documentary about homelessness in order to shine a positive light on himself as a humanitarian.
Style Tests
(This test footage I filmed on my camera follows one of the thumbnail storyboards we came up with earlier in the project.)
Having taken some reference photographs last week, this week I produced a background test in order to test out the potential styles of our final animation. Wanting to experiment with more hybrid forms of animation I am very much fond of the idea of using fully live action backgrounds, so I took some reference video this week around the streets near my house to get a feel for how that might look. However, once I looked back over the footage I decided the footage I took was much too shaky to use and if we are to move forward with this we should use a stabiliser of some sort and a DSLR camera to ensure the highest level of quality and the lowest amount of camera shake, as that makes it more difficult to track the 2D assets (the characters) to the backgrounds in After Effects.
I also produced a style test using some of the pictures I took the other week, one of Tess' character concepts and a ton of Photoshop filters. For this concept I drew inspiration from the faded, printed look of skyline towards the beginning of The Beatles Yellow Submarine music video. I tried emulating this film-like aesthetic in Photoshop by adjusting the levels and colour saturation in Photoshop, then applying a fair amount of filmic grain and a slight amount of wear and dust scratches to the image to get that used look. If we do end up going with Live Action Backgrounds we will probably apply a similar process to the footage in After Effects to age it, or possibly rotoscope it akin to 'When the Day Breaks.'
Style Test
No comments:
Post a Comment