Animatic

Here's the animated storyboard, or animatic.
A lot of the shots got messed up while rendering them in After Effects, making certain parts waaaaay too light. It's a little distracting, but I made the animatic for the purpose of seeing how the timing and general movements look. And I'm pleased.

You might recall that the original story has one more scene, where the sun and the moon talked about what to do. I removed this scene.
That's because sometimes you have to let go of things. Whenever you make something, it's good to pause occasionally and ask yourself the question "Why am I doing this?", and think about it. Does what you do help your work? Does it add something? Or should you cut it?
And sometimes you realize that adding that space monkey or electric cat just doesn't fit your grim and realistic setting, and you take them out no matter how much you love the idea of having one of those. And your work will be better for it.
This is called 'killing your darlings', and at some point every artist will have to*.

So let's look at the scene, and see what it does:

- it introduces a new character, the sun. And,

- shows the relation between it and the moon.

- it has two people talking.

What would this scene require?
- One or two new backgrounds, and

- a new character (and the accompanying research and design).

Why keep it?
- It adds a little to the story, and

- allows me to show off some more of my animation.

Why not keep it?

- requires a reasonable amount of time for research, design, drawing and animating. I have only a very limited amount of time for the whole animation.

- if cut, the character of the moon will have to offer the alternative to the snake, and eventually make the choice of sacrificing herself, without first consulting with another character. I think this adds to her character's strength.

- The characters talking is a break in the story, as two of the characters are only talking, and the other two waiting for them to finish talking before they can continue. I think breaks can be great for a story, but this is a very short animation, and I think I can keep the pacing up without remotely wearing out the viewer.

So there are my thoughts. I hope to have shown you how I approach a story, and my view on editing.
And because you read through this, I would like to present you with the remaining drawings, in the colors they were meant to have:

*I want to add that I don't like the wording of 'killing your darlings'. I have sketchbooks in which I keep all ideas I cut. This way they can live on, maybe grow stronger. And whenever I need an idea, I will have a sketchbook full of ideas to choose from. It also means I have no way of running out of inspiration, for I have sketchbooks full of things I'd love to make.

More backgrounds

More storyboard sketches, some of them more readable than others. I suppose I should work on that, although the storyboard is mostly for timing purposes than aesthetic confirmation.

Since Hala no gadang is the constellation, I've worked that into it's preliminary design. Initially, this was just for fun and experimentation, but I think I might play with this some more as it has a nice mystical/surreal vibe which could help the feel of the animation. It's nice to get little surprises like that.

I will work some more tonight, but I'm not entirely sure whether I'll be animating these, or drawing more.

Snake eyes.

Grabbing a rock.

A snake, a man, and crushed eggs.

Running to the edge of the world and beyond

Boy do I have a lot of custom brushes for foliage and rock...I suppose that says something about what I like to draw ;)

The flow of time

One of the problems of a big project is finding motivation to continue along the way, and making sure everything is done in a timely fashion.
Some people are naturally very good at this, and they just keep going.
Usually I'm not one of these ppeople unless I'm already going and in a flow; that moment where you just keep on going because you're doing so well, so why stop? And then I look out of the window and see the sun is rising again. Oops.
While in the flow, everything is fine, but getting there is the difficult path.
There are a few ways of getting there though.

You could imagine the results, and just go for them. Sometimes you just have this amazing idea, and you must draw it badly. You just grab a pencil and go.
I like those moments, but they are very rare.

Usually, it's something exernal that spurs me on, like a deadline.
But deadlines are useless unless there are consequences for missing them. Luckily, deadlines are usually set by a client or a boss and you will be in trouble for not delivering on time. Usually that means getting less to eat for a while, and food is one of my prime motivations (for anything really. Offer me food works like rubbing a genie's lamp.)
But for this, I set and enforce my own deadlines. And most people can tell from experience that you can suddenly become very flexible with deadlines when you set them for yourself. So I'll need to have someone else who is able to call me out on missing a deadline.
That would be you.
So I'll tell you my current milestone deadline, and you may call me out on missing it. In fact, I insist.

The (animated) storyboard must be complete by sunday the 21st.

Here's the checklist, I'll update it when progress is made:

(Complete!)
All storyboard sketches made.

(Complete!)
All storyboard shots drawn.

(Complete!)
All storyboard shots animated, rendered and uploaded.


And here's one shot done already :) :

The man hiding from the rain, the snake in the shadows.

Work in Progress - Storyboard

Today a small but significant update, as I've started working on the storyboard in greyscales.
This afternoon, I got as far as the first two shots, and animated them to give a sense of timing. Timing which I'm not entirely happy with yet, but I think that once the real animating starts will look more natural. Maybe I should look up some references for impressive cloud formations as well.
What do you think?

(Click on an image to enlarge)

The opening shot with titles and a cow.

Ominous clouds.

The animated storyboard.

Inspiration

Let me show you some of the things I like, and show you a bit of how I'd work as an art director.

I watch a lot of movies. And when I'm not watching movies, I like to watch shows about movies. 

I'm not a movie buff by any means, but I'm trying very hard to become one! 

And it has a use too, which I hope will become clear throughout this post.

So I have this animation project, which is a Sumatran myth about the new moon.

I already know why I'm making this, and what I'm going to tell. But how will it look?

One of the most difficult things about starting a new project which isn't a commission is that everything is possible. But doing everything is impossible. So let's not do everything.

Let's start somewhere simple. Color.

If I simplify things, there would be two directions to go. Muted and desaturated colors, and bright and vibrant colors. Both can be good choices, and I can easily name examples of where each of them works great. Schindler's List looked phenomenal with next to no color, as did Saving Private Ryan with its limited color palette.

On the other side you have the Life of Pi, and superhero movies like the Avengers which make great use of color to add life to their worlds.

The point is to choose the visual direction that suits your project the best.

Sometimes you have to make hard choices and exclude some of your favorite inspiration. Some would call this 'killing your darlings', but I think that's a misnomer. Because when I have a good idea, but it would be totally inappropriate for what I'm working on right now, I write it down into my sketchbook. And whenever I am out of inspiration, I can take my sketchbook and use anything I've written down before. So I don't kill my darlings, but I will keep them for a moment where they would grow into something great. As a bonus, I will never have to say that I have no inspiration! :)

Back to my animation. It is set in a jungle (and in space), and has the potential for some surreal but wonderful imagery. 

Here's what I came up with for inspiration:

The Fall, by Tarsem Singh

Bright, colorful, and a fairytale to boot!

I also like the stylized camerawork. This will be my main visual inspiration.

Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet 

Maybe not colorful the way I want to use colors, but it has beautiful cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel.

HERO, directed by Zhang Yimou

Yet another fairytale, this one makes creative use of colors to tell it's tales.

I might not use the colors like this, but I will take a good look at what I can learn from it.

House of the Flying Daggers, also directed by Zhang Yimou

I might as well add all Zhang Yimou films...

James Cameron's Jame's Cameron's Avatar by James Cameron, directed by James Cameron

I'm not the biggest fan of the movie as a whole, but boy does it do fantastical and colorful jungles well. I probably also like it for Dylan Cole's matte paintings.

Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Again, I could add all Miyazaki movies for having not only wonderful visuals, but also a strong fantastical element worked into the visual design.

Fantasia/Fantasia 2000

I think that this is one of Disney studio's greatest projects, maybe with the exception of...

Destino, Disney animation studios and Salvador Dali

The above movie is the whole animation.

I could go on by naming artists, illustrators in all kinds of different media. Okay, very quickly I'll name at least Tin Tin, Daniel Dociu's art, Pascal Blanché any movie by Spike Jonze and the videogame Bioshock Infinite. Urgh, too many, so let's just stick to the examples I've shown above. Keeping focused is also very important.

But there's one more thing I'd like to share. Because this animation is going to be a lot of work, I'd like my composition in each shot to be as effective as possible, thereby reducing the amount of work I'd need to do. Lots of shots mean lots of backgrounds, and I know I'm going to be spending a day or two on each background already (I do pride myself on landscapes, you know).

So I'll add some reference for composition in motion pictures as well, to see how far a shot can be pushed.

BBC Sherlock, cinematography by Fabian Wagner

I love Fabian Wagner's work on Sherlock, but I am saddened that I can't find more of his work.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, cinematography by Roger Deakins

This movie should be watched by any cinematographer, preferably more than once.

Roger Deakins is one of the living legends, so as with the Hayao Miyazaki films, I could as well include all of Deakins' work here.

And there you have it. Well, not all of it.

I will have to look into specific references for the character and background designs. That'll mean looking at Indonesia and the visual language of a country, its landscapes and its mythology. But I will do so separately for each background and character. I've given you enough for today, I think.

See you next time, when I'll show some storyboards! :)

How the new moon came to be

This is a story from Sumatra.

How the new moon came to be

Once upon a time, there was a cow herder who let his cows graze on the grass.
Suddenly, heavy clouds appeared, and began to pour heavy rain. The herder ran to the forest for shelter.
There he noticed a huge snake, bigger than any he'd seen. The snake sat on a nest of eggs.
The man understood that the snake was Hala no gadang, the one who would appear at the night's sky as the star sign. How would the man escape such a creature?
Fearfully, he grabbed a rock and threw it at the snake with all his strength.
The man missed the snake, but he hit the eggs, and broke them all.
The snake was furious! "You have killed my children! Now, I will kill you!"
The man ran and ran and ran, but the snake chased him wherever he went. But, she could not catch up to him.
Then, the man reached the end of the world. And with a great jump he took to the heavens. But the snake followed him.
The man went to the moon, and begged her for her protection. Then the snake arrived, and told the moon of the injustice done to her.
The moon took pity on the man, but did not know how to help him. She went to the sun for council.
After a while the sun and the moon decided the snake should be compensated by the man.
But the snake refused, insisting on eating the one who has killed her children.
Then the moon made a decision.
"If you insist on eating someone, take me instead." she said "I will offer you my body to eat each month, but let this man have his life."
The snake agreed to that, an this is why each month the moon disappears from the sky; the snake has eaten her.

Facing challenges (final part)

Previously, I said that I'd like to animate small and complex movements, and I hope to use that to make the animation richer and more life-like.
But what makes your work life-like?
That's a question that many artist ask themselves at some point, and there's a simple way to understand the answer.
You look at life.
Artists have done this since the beginning of art, because to be honest, if you don't know how something looks it's quite hard to draw it convincingly.

This is something that helped animators as well. One example for traditional animation is Disney studios, where the artists would go to the zoo to study animals, and hire models for reference shoots at the studios themselves.
I will add that this raises a simple question. Because if you have actors performing the whole scene, why not just trace the reference?
This is true, and has a name: rotoscoping. Historically, this has always looked awful. Every. Single. Time. The artist's hand in the animation is almost completely lost, and the result looks incredibly bland.
I will not look to rotoscoping.

But there's one thing I will look at: motion capturing. You might be familiar with this from Avatar and Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings. Here's an example from a videogame called L.A. Noire:

L.A. Noire: The technology behind the Performance by Team Bondi, uploaded by IGN

I really like at how they let a computer look at the actor by making it look at the volumes in the actor's face. I think this is important because these volumes, usually muscles and/or fat, not only define how something looks, but also have an impact on what's around them.
An example: the face.
Eyes are very important in any acting performance. The eyes can move themselves easily enough, but they are also subtly pushed and their shape slightly distorted by the volumes around them. These are the eyebrows and cheeks. Here's a test I made a little while ago, where I marked the eyebrow and cheek volumes.

Now what really fascinates me is the idea that these volumes can be taken separately, and streetched and squashed and moved to fit onto a different face. Maybe something non-human like the face of a snake. And then their movement can be used to make that snake act as the human would, with all the subtle movement intact and the way it would be expected to move...if snakes could talk.
I have not tried this yet, but it will be my other challenge:

Use capturing to include characters' (human and non-human) subtler motions into the animation.


And that was the last of the long technical posts about the function, or reason why I want to make this animation.
The next post will be about the contents, so I get to tell you a story.
And to round up I'll post about the visual design where I get to show you some of the works that inspire me visually. Great stuff :)