the animatic

I should mention I storyboarded and made an animatic before turning my attention to my character. So here are they!

I'm really pleased with the progression since then actually. I no longer have the cat. I changed some angles, I developed a general style of close and tight angles for the entire thing and I made it less tacky whiles still making it more christmasy, which aint easy baby.

To prove that I didn't just make all that up here is my animatic from the last time I updated it:

Told you. So since here I have taken the door out and replaced it with a scene where he carves his pumpkin and places a tea light in it. I wanted context to begin with but doors always seem to imply movement and because their wasn't any it became an irrelevant scene. In addition I squabbled with myself about the religious connotations of the tree but decided to leave it in there. And lastly I decided to include one wide panning shot of the neighbourhood just after the character leaves and realises it's Christmas just to give people a chance to absorb the actual Christmas message of the card.

The character

This is my initial character design sheet for the Christmas card. The first design I decided to throw away because I didn't think I wanted my character to be too young as young people would know what holiday it was. So I thought I wanted to make him an older, independent character who would have so much going on that he might not necessarily realise what point in the year it was. I t also allows me to incorporate the idea that consumers have Christmas forced upon them the second Halloween is over. Which I believe is one of the reasons  dislike Christmas. I amn't allowed to become excited about it in my own time. It is forced on me by advertising, Christmas specials in November, The German market in the centre of Edinburgh. It's inescapable! Erm sorry. Anyway that's why not him. At one point I was getting sick of trying to come up with a mature and independent character that appeared to be mildly dressed in a Halloween costume, so I decided to really go for it and Twinkie man was born. That was a sad day for me. The day my character looked the best dressed like a Twinkie. Next I thought maybe I should play around with a normal male, short back and sides appearance but with a twist on a Christmas jumper so I didn't have to work to hard on his shape. It just didn't feel right. So I thought maybe I should make him not give a shit but no that sent the wrong messade. Then finally I got it. He could be naturally orientated towards Halloween then he would appear just the right amount of Halloween although easily translatable to Christmas. Bingo!

So in developing my Christmas card. I decided I wanted some way to unify the entire cartoon from holiday to holiday but retain the shock of his realisation that in fact it is Christmas and not Halloween. I thought about doing the entire thing in just shades of blue, hence the blue shading above.

But it was pointed out to me that the shock of him walking into Christmas might be lost and I definitely don't want that. So then I thought two colours. Red and blue! It's so obvious now!
So here's where I went from there!

And basically I love it!

So in development I obviously considered the obvious:

The nightmare before Christmas! Image courtesy of Capcom Production.

 

So like I said this is the obvious choice to look at when creating an animation about a crossover Christmas/Halloween thing. Naturally I can't make it as complex or long or detailed but it did help me to get thinking about the classic icons of the two holiday which helped me a lot!

 

 

I knew that my animation wasn't an obviously Christmas themed short so I began to look at other unconventional approaches to Christmas, when I did I came across this animation illustrated by Hugh Whyte and animated by ark G. Murphy and published by DigitalKick:

 

 

However after watching this one I discovered several routes I didn't want to go down. I didn't want to be really anti-Christmas , sad or boring. I also didn't want to use that limited sound. I want music... I think. Yet I did like the limited colour pallet. By this point I had designed a character (Which I will go into later and had fully rendered him but from here I began to question that approach.

 

Following this I tired searching for shorts that were in just one colour but it is proving harder than I thought. I want to do the whole animation in white and shaded in blue but I need to see if this is achievable with depth or if it becomes to difficult to differentiate between layers.



Decision making!

Ok so I'm skipping a project here which I will go back to when I'm happy for you all to see it. It was an animated documentary and I will put it up just not now.

Anyway our current project is to animate a Christmas card just in time for Christmas. (oh yey Christmas, my favourite holiday... not). Initially I had three ideas.

1. The Wrong Holiday: So the guy is setting his house up all ready for Halloween, goes t put his pumpkin on the porch and looks up to see sea of glittering lights, light up Santas and presents. Then his neighbour informs him it is indeed Christmas.
2. Christmas Spirit: In this one I thought I could have a play on words using things that make it feel Christmas-y and also things that are spirits. So I was thinking booze and ghosts.
3. The Icing on the Cake: This was a really silly idea. So it goes that the mother of the household has her whole family round for Christmas dinner, as you do. She brings the Christmas pudding out and light the top on fire, as you do. Then suddenly the fire brigade burst in and spray the place down with a fire extinguisher leaving one severely pissed off mother covered from top to toe in what will probably be whipped cream.

I bet you can tell which one I picked right? yeah I picked the first one! I put it to a vote as to which one I should start with my friends picked that one and as I brainstormed and developed them that one turned out the best. I fell at the first hurdle with the second idea, that is to say I couldn't come up with anything Christmas spirit-y. Most probably because I dislike Christmas. Oh well. Then when I thought about the last one, each time I thought more and more that it sounded like a half assed idea that I'd come up with a week before he dead line. So it was decided The Wrong Holiday it was!

So to explain my process before I show you my finished piece, I began this work by drawing the ball and the backgrounds and filming it using the Take 5. I then took these layers into After Effects and composited them and finally added colour to each individual frame (not before fighting with myself about whether I thought Orange or red would be a better colour) then rendering the finished piece.

So here it is-