Early on I identified for myself that Scene Two could be a quick gain in terms of production. It contained some tricky transitions too which would be good to solve early. One of those transitions is the growing of a carpet from a full black screen. I had the idea to create one instance of a carpet fibre growth then multiply it to produce a full floor.
One of my favourite production design styles was employed on the Disney feature 101 Dalmatians. I really admire the sketchy line work that they used and the blocks of colour overlapping the outlines of objects. For me it contributed hugely to the sense of energy in the film and I hope that my backgrounds can be as effective in communicating, in this instance, a sense of otherworldliness to high energy to calm.
My film will be employing a black and white aesthetic in keeping with the comic art from the original story. In producing the backgrounds I also wanted to hold to the rendering style of the comic books. To that end I drew the backgrounds in pencil and inked them using the same techniques and tools as I used on the comic book. I see this as the base layer which may or may not require further working up. This depends on how the background will play with the animation. I’m conscious that the style was used for static images and may very well require more when interacting with motion.
I have decided to animate my film using the traditional frame by frame method. I am hand pencilling most of the scenes because I really want to portray as graceful a feel as possible to the animation and this is the best way that I know how to. I will then be inking the pencils digitally in Photoshop. With the more complex scenes like the dancing scenes I will really want to nail down the keys through to breakdowns and in-betweens as much as possible in pencils before scanning in to ink. But with some of the more straightforward basic storytelling scenes I’ve found that just roughing the keys and breakdowns then scanning them in for inking can work and will help to economise the process. I realise that the method I’ve chosen is a labour intensive approach so I am consistently looking for ways to speed up the process while not compromising on the quality I want to maintain.
This is the first piece of animation I’ve produced for the film. It’s for scene twelve, the spotlight coming on.
As part of my research into the current animation industry in Ireland I arranged to have a meeting with Lena Byrne, Head of Scripting at Jam Media. As the script represents the stage before storyboarding in the animation pipeline I felt that this would be a valuable opportunity to understand the visual development process from that perspective.
Lena was enthusiastic to share her knowledge and support. I learned a lot about the scripting process; the structure of a writing team for a series; how story ideas are pitched; the importance of knowing the tone of a series; and the interaction, the give and take between scripting and visual departments.
During the meeting Lena also introduced me to Jam’s Animatic Editor Tiago Gil Batista, and their Animation Supervisor/Director Rafa Diaz Canales. I learned a great deal about what they expect from a storyboard artist; Tiago emphasised the need for a good grasp of film language; Rafa spoke about how a lot of thought has to go in to a storyboard before the visualisation can begin. They also kindly offered me the opportunity to take a test for storyboarding with Jam when I’ve completed the college course.
Gary Gowran 