I’ve always found myself influenced by animation that discusses real topics and issues. Perfect Blue and Persepolis are two of my favourite examples of this, and although my film does not directly correlate to the conflict addressed in either film, I wanted to keep a sort of ‘dream-like’ state in the latter half of the animation that is similar to Perfect Blue.
Developments after the intial research assignment
My initial idea was going to be looking at my past experiences with emetophobia, and struggling with my social life due to agoraphobia, however, after this point I was finding it difficult to think of an actual storyline for this without making it autobiographical. I decided instead to focus on emetophobia regardless but base it on the struggles I had with food and eating instead, since this greatly impacted my late teens. For me, food was not a necessity, it would eventually become vomit and that scared me greatly. I wanted the film to personify food as vomit, and though I wasn’t aiming for a happy ending, the main character is eventually able to overcome this obstacle.
Logline: Finding herself unable to ‘let loose’, a young woman suffering from emetophobia becomes increasingly wary of her surroundings, leading to feelings of isolation and a particular aversion to food.
Moodboard (slide 3) Sources
Backdrops
Kidblind, Matteo Berton, https://matteoberton.com/Kiblind
serena-doodles, https://serena-doodles.tumblr.com/post/140019629814/done
Summer, Bex Glendining, https://www.lgions.com/?lightbox=dataItem-jxnf1t9o
Temmie Chang, https://temmiechang.tumblr.com/post/165496197584/sketchbook-draw
Style Inspiration
Best Friend – Animation Short Film 2018 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/j01Hg4QJ6NE
Birdsong (CalArts Film 2022), https://youtu.be/b4_dq_e4KGs
CONTRETEMPS – Animation Short Film 2021 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/ot9DnkGP6Gg
ÉLÉGIE – (FX exercice – Bachelor of Arts in Character Animation and Animated Filmmaking), https://youtu.be/KbmBoQQF134
GLOW UP, https://youtu.be/XFhCt_UAArE
LOUISE – Animation Short Film 2021 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/7GjJef2QkQU
MAGNIFICA – Animation Short Film 2022 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/7YrKFtYLp1s
mitosis (a calarts 48hr film), https://youtu.be/FhPyDQC9vRE
PARFUM FRAISE | Animation Short Film 2017 – GOBELINS, https://youtu.be/Owl6crWLibQ
Brief concept art I created to have a feel for what my story would be about, but as I mentioned in the first slide, the idea felt too much like a live action film as opposed to an animation, so I scrapped it and ended up going for a more fantastical idea.
After receiving some feedback from tutors, I strayed away from my initial idea and leaned more into my second idea, where the main character struggles with food. Since I suffered from an extreme fear of vomiting, I wanted food to essentially be vomit in the eyes of the main character. Initially, I thought it was pretty humorous dedicating a canvas to vomit but it paid off in the end since the design stayed consistent in the final animation.
My first priority regarding character design was to ensure they would be animation-friendly. I figured that the third outfit design on the left would be the best option since it was plain, but suited the character. The second one would have also been a decent choice too however it didn’t take me long to figure out animating a skirt would be outside of my skillset.
In the end, I had two character, the Older Sister (left) and the Main Character (right). I wanted the Sister to have a prominent role in the film, however I ran into a problem where a segment of her head was cut-off (as shown in the proof of concept) which was so disappointing I left her character out for the climax and latter half of the film. Regardless, I’m fond of her design as it’s unique but simple, and she definitely feels like the older sister to the main character. If I could change her in any way, I would make her hair less detailed since that was a task to animate.
I mostly based my background artwork based on images of my house, while also altering the colours so that it would fit the general artstyle. Unfortunately, a lot of the dining room scene is cut out due to the fact that the sister’s head was accidentally deleted, so I had to make-do by zooming in.
The second background would be the main character’s room, I kept it at an angle for a bit of uneasiness, while keeping the camera above the character to convey her feelings of idleness. Because I wanted to keep the backgrounds a bit detailed, I had to limit how many I wanted to make. I personally believe I would have benefited from one more, to add more dimension to the film’s world.
There are a few perspective changes within this segment of the storyboard, I wanted to make sure my film was visually interesting, while also making sure the camera angles made sense for the mood. The overhead shot in Scene 2 was done intentionally to make the main character feel little to the viewer, and the second shot creates the effect that the character is looking at herself in a mirror. The mood is also overall a little bit dark, to capture a more heavy emotion that is felt by the characters. In the end, the Main Character and Sister swap places since I wanted the Sister to be in-front a brightly lit hallway, reflecting her lack of conflict versus the Main Character’ (who is in the foreground of a darker backdrop).
The latter half of the storyboard has less tone variation since the setting switches to a whiter, neutral space. The atmosphere is not necessarily jovial, but a place where the main character finds some inner peace.
I created a very basic colour script for my film, I was a little bit unsure on the colours I picked, however, after creating the script, I figured out what colours looked best with each other and whether the colour transitions would not be too jarring. I noticed that my palette was mostly greens, blues, browns and purples so I tried to stick to that palette the whole way through
Animation Test
Proof Of Concept
Animatic
Production
I tried to keep my production process rather simple, with the flow being
Roughs > Tie Down> Clean Up > Colour
I also added some light shading, however, since I was running out of time, I skipped this for certain scenes and used Tone and Highlight nodes as a shortcut.
Compositing in PDF.
Final Film
statement of intent and critical appraisal in pdf!