Vlad's Studio Practice: Animation 1: Character & Narrative Weekly Summary 3

This week's workflow of mine has leaned towards the digital creation of assets towards my animation. Slowly finishing up with pre-production and entering the realm of production, I designed several elements that are to define the environment of my animation. With Jay creating his own, we figured that we are to blend both of the background elements we make when constructing the independent scenes and shots (all when we are underway with our production). By scanning my sketchbook, I created the blocks with faces of despair and demise onto them which are to serve as ambiguous items floating in the air to solidify the dreamscape-like notion of our animation. Alongside this, I made a pill which is to be used several times within the animation - both in the water and immobilized in the air - based off the reference of a picture of an actual pill. Furthermore, since these assets are going to be interacting with the main light that the lighthouse will emit, I made a gradient within the pill that is to define the importance of the atmosphere that the light creates (based on the initial placeholder shot I designed). On the other side, I finished drawing the profile view of my character which gave me a meticulous reference based on which I shall create the other poses of Seth. Moreover, I used the parameters of his size to draw guides which will aid me in maintaining the consistency of his shapes and structure (which I already have used to make the head for his frontal shot). Even so, I spent a day discussing the influence of my character's color on the ambience of the animation, since we are following a more-or-less strict color schematic. Thus, I made several color chrome sheets from which I will decide the most fitting color for Seth before I actually start rigging him, since I figured organizing it in a manner where I draw every single pose first and rigging them all later would be a much more effective workflow because it will envelop the time I spend on each section and give me a reference for time management. Finally, just in time for the Interim Crit as well, me and Jay spliced together the animatic in order to roughly reference the length of each scene and how it blends with the soundscape that I created. Furthermore, we put together the fundamental sound effects that will guide and follow the flow of the animation, from character movement to environmental interaction. Although it is not impeccable, the animatic resolved our skepticism on how the scenes will transition between one another by giving us a rough representation of the narrative. I believe that the synthesis of music and ambient sounds will be highly complementary with the visual dark space that surrounds our characters, emphasizing the passive but nightmarish realm in which the characters drive the narrative but the environment defines the context.

"Animatic - Adrift" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddakspiXFs