Storyboarding/Animatic
I wanted the storyboard/animatic to be complete before the end of this semester, so I spent a good bit of time chopping and changing the animatic till I was happy and ready to animate the story. I have stayed fairly true to my schedule but did spend more time on the storyboarding and animatic that I had hoped. However, I also feel this is one of the most important stages in the pre-production and I wanted the story to be right for me, so I don't feel this was time wasted.
Character Design
One of the first aspects of the visual development that I wanted to tackle was the character design. Once this was finalised, I would be happy to start animating, and could continue working on things like background and colour design while animating.
The best way for me to figure out characters is by lots of sketching! So I spent a good bit of time with my sketchbook, drawing my two characters and trying to get the right look for them. I wanted the designs to be in my usual 'style' but be easy enough to animate (so not too time-consuming).
I looked at photographs and paintings of 19th century/early 20th century fisherman for ideas of clothing. The horse is based on the hardy Highland Pony. I didn't want the horse to be too elegant or skinny legged but a heavy work animal. As I said, both characters are meant to mirror one another and I want them to be a relatively equal match, but at the same time the horse is a much more powerful animal with a much more hefty structure!
I would love the character's to have more texture and form to them than my usual flat/block colouring. This is of course dependent on time however, and will require a little bit of experimenting to see how texture/shading/lighting could be added without too much time consumed. While designing the characters, I tried out traditional-style Photoshop brushes to add texture (above images), which I liked the look of...
Setting Design
I have also been focusing on the environment/setting design in the last few weeks. I hope that the landscape will act as another character in my film - and be visualized as an integral part of the narrative and of importance to the fisherman and horse. Plus, the film should paint a picture of a real place, and I would love if the audience could be transported to these kind of remote and beautiful corners of Scotland. I guess you could say there is a theme of isolation in my film; the literal isolation of such a remote location, or being literally cut off by an island, and the isolation felt by the characters. But I also want to show that this environment is not as isolating as one might think! The characters need to engage with their environment to conquer their fears and find a sense of place. It's a harsh environment (as will be characterized in the opening scenes), but can also be a beautiful and rewarding home.
The fishing boat design is based on traditional boats from the 18th/early 20th century (but isn't strictly accurate - more inspired by boats of that time than resembling any certain model/type).
I also took a wee museum break to find inspiration in the Celtic/Pictish artifacts there. I'm thinking that the animation of elements like the waves and underwater scenes will be a bit more stylised/abstract than the character animation...
Colour Script
I
have also just started on a quick colour script - so far I have been
working on the opening scenes. Like the setting design, I think the
colour is going to be an important tool in the film, so I want to map it
out in advance before I start creating the backgrounds/colouring the
frames. I'm hoping to be finished with this before semester 2 starts.
So, the visual development and pre-production phase is almost at a close! I have a bit more work to do, primarily on the setting design, but am hoping to have this finished early in semester 2. Next step really is to get all the animation done! The film stands at just under 6 minutes right now, so there is a lot to do...
