As I enter the pre-production phase, I have decided on my characters, setting, general art style and a rough synopsis of the story. At this point I have decided that the title of the film will be Shellbound.
Alongside other students working on 2D or 2D hybrid animated projects, I am being tutored by Aodhan throughout this year. Each Tuesday class is an opportunity to show up with progress and receive and provide feedback where needed. On occasions where I have been unable to attend in person, it has been possible to share work and receive feedback from Aodhan through Discord. I find the delivery of these tutorials similar to a professional setting and I feel a general improvement in my social confidence, as far as presenting my art with confidence goes. It is all I got! Not all I am.
Story and Script Development
After discussing the synopsis of my film during the pitch presentation, I received some feedback that the driving force behind the narrative was unclear. This feedback affected how I approached the story.
With Shellbound I was hoping to explore the themes of sibling estrangement and how a simple act of kindness can change a relationship. The younger brother Cai wants nothing more than his older sister Ffion to spend time with him, like she once did but she has become preoccupied with tasks that she feels are more age-appropriate. The main storytelling device is the shell and its transformation into a magical creature called Shplooba. I want the moment of this transformation to also resonate as a major moment in terms of the relationship between the siblings. A way I approached this was to establish the Shplooba as a creature that both siblings used to believe in but now only one of them still believes. I believe this heightens the impact of when they both see the Shplooba for the first time together. I wanted to elevate this feeling further by having Ffion be the one that brings the shell to Cai showing that she still cares about how much these things mean to him.
Following my first group tutorial, I sent a first draft of my script to Aodhan. His feedback was to create more of a sense of conflict between the two siblings, so that the ending has more of an impact. I addressed this feedback by adjusting the dialogue to make the confrontation in the first act feel more impactful. When developing the script, I looked at Song of The Sea as a reference as it features a similarly strained childhood sibling relationship.
At this point after implementing the feedback, the script is final.
Storyboards and Animatic
When I started to think about possible shots, I referred back to footage I had taken from Tremone Bay. Below are some shot concepts I came up with. I annotated any moving elements with arrows. I made the mistake of having darker values in the background vs. the foreground, which makes some of the shots read unclear.
After I had finalised the script, I moved onto storyboarding. An easy way I learned how to set up storyboards in Photoshop was by using layer comps. This video by Rajen Ramkallawan was a really helpful resource for me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5mpvuTp_57Q
As I worked on the storyboards, I thought about how I should best use visual storytelling to convey the narrative. At times I found this to be difficult and did not always know how to approach a shot. I made sure to consult my tutors and peers whenever able, and found their fresh outlook to be extremely helpful. It was very important for me to tell the story in the most visually effective way so I always made sure to take feedback on board and make necessary alterations to my boards.
With it being a solo project, I understood that there would be half as much time to get things done so I focused on what would save me time in production. This meant spending more time adding detail to my storyboards and deciding on background layouts ahead of time. Even though it required some extra effort to consider all of these things, I am glad that I did so. Once I was done with the boards, I was also happy to see the story laid out visually.
With this in mind, I did not feel the need to create an animatic with fully animated elements as this would take a lot of time I could be spending on working on finalising my designs. I put together an animatic in Premiere using my boards, temporary voice over that I had recorded, as well as some possible sounds and music I found. The most important task is to figure out the timing of each shot to determine the expected length of the animation.
As previously mentioned, I did my placement with a local studio Paper Owl Films, animating on a 2D animated TV production. I experienced the professional pipeline of animation production first-hand, which is extremely valuable to have in Final Year. Part of this pipeline was always having a brilliant animatic to refer to. Knowing what to expect from an animatic as an animator, I made sure to create an animatic that would be useful to me in production.
Below is my third pass of the animatic. Overall, I feel that my choice in music made me hold the shots for too long, otherwise I am happy with the alterations I made upon receiving feedback from Aodhan.
Character and Prop Designs
As seen below, I used a sketchbook for convenience when exploring different character design elements. In the same sketchbook, I also wanted to draw as many iterations as I could and be left with a handful of nice ones that could help inform my final designs.
Since the beginning, I wanted Cai to appear kind-hearted and lovable. My main inspiration for Cai is Tove Jansson’s Moomin, who has both of these traits. Cai is a young boy with a love of shells and the beach. He has sea green hair to represent the sea and a knitted jumper that resembles a scallop shell. His skin tone is tan and freckled. In some of my development work he appeared slightly older, so I tried to simplify his forms and make him just 3 heads tall, while still honouring his original design.
Ffion is Cai’s sister, she is much more withdrawn than Cai. My main inspiration for her design was Sheeta from Castle in The Sky. Ffion’s design is also inspired by the foxglove flower, with dark rose coloured hair with hair buns that resemble the flower’s buds. Ffion’s name is also Welsh for foxglove, which was fitting. I wanted to portray her personality through her expression. She is 3 1/2 heads tall.
Ffion’s design went through a few iterations to get it right, and these design sheets are not completely final, however the overall intention of the design stayed the same. I experimented with different styles to achieve the level of appeal I was going for with this story.
During the character designing process I was inspired by the work of Stephen Silver. His designs use straightforward, but fun shape language to simplify forms for the purpose of animation. I also learned about and implemented the CSI method, which primarily uses curved or straight lines for design.
Shplooba is a magical underwater creature bound to a shell. Shplooba resembles a puppy, a tadpole and a seal with jellyfish like colouring. Shploobas are real!
Shplooba’s design was the least developed thus far and I had to just trust the vision I had in my mind when creating it. Having Cai and Ffion’s designs finished, it was relatively easy to match the same art style to a creature. I did this by repeating some of the round shape language and lines. I chose a purpley colour palette to suggest the Shplooba’s magical nature.
It is extremely important to me for the characters to have appeal as I personally believe it to be the most crucial part of design. I have a personal style that is heavily inspired by my appreciation for Bukowski Design stuffed animals. I find myself very particular about the eye and nose placements and I think it is because it is what sets two of the same stuffed animals apart. The same applies to 2D design too.
A very helpful resource for understanding the importance of lines in design is this talk from Alfredo Cassano, the lead animator of Jesper from Klaus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgyyl8DZw1U
When designing Cai and Ffion’s house, I was inspired by the house seen in My Neighbour Totoro. I wanted the house to appear to have been renovated to be bigger, instead of just being a small cottage. It is maybe slightly too big, but I am sure they are living well haha. I struggled the most with perspective in this, but since the house would only be seen from two perspectives I was not overly worried about that.
Tests and Experimentation
Before I could move into production, it was necessary to do some tests. With character designs finished, I started to consider the colour palettes of the backgrounds. I used both Coolors and Adobe libraries to keep my colours accessible throughout the project.
To help me come up with a suitable colour palette for the film, I sketched out some background thumbnails over the storyboards to make some tests with. I generally knew the look I was going for, which was something between Moomin and Bluey. To achieve ta nostalgic feel, I applied a warm toned filter over the image and used the picker tool to collect the colours into a library. The filter is what makes the sky appear slightly green, which I personally really like.
After having some thumbnails done, I wanted to see if the characters still stood out enough against the backgrounds. I feel that the colours work really well together for the most part, and I am glad that these tests were successful.
Having character designs finalised, I really wanted to practise using ToonBoom Harmony a bit more before jumping straight into production as this was the software I was going to be animating with for this project. Last summer, I had created a small test animation with it after watching a livestream class by Jesse J. Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl1LcET86DY&list=PLYRPVtOhCRnlJvgadv6GMHhqZeNtSb6_C&index=3. Watching this whole stream before even opening the software was very helpful as I knew I would be overwhelmed without any learning materials in the summer. It also taught me several helpful things about the software and animation in general which I am really thankful for (I will be touching upon those further in production). In my first rough animation test I explored the Shplooba’s movement in water.
Since I had not touched ToonBoom since the summer, I wanted to go ahead and ease into it by practising animating Cai’s walk cycle. This allowed me to learn the new software while also helping me land on a style of animation for the project. In my first attempt I struggled to keep forms and shapes consistent and had difficulty applying any principles. I think that this attempt shows how I rushed the process and did not put enough thought into the purpose of any of the drawings. It can seem a bit harsh, but I believe that it is equivalent to faking before you make it. This version of Cai is going through it and he does not look well. I am so, so sorry Cai.
See my animation reference by Jeff Liu below. Aodhan pointed out that my reference has very subtle arcs and I believe that this made my first attempt look like it was missing weight too.
I also received some feedback from peers who were so kind to give me some tips on how I can improve my animation. One of my friends suggested I draw too much and advised me to try copying some of the elements to keep them consistent. I was able to see my mistakes and areas that needed improvement, so I decided to create a second pass with these fixes in mind.
After applying the feedback I got from my tutor and peers, I feel like the movement looks more natural. Aodhan was happy with the improvement, however advised me to pay attention to how the knees are bending. Overall, I am glad I took the time to practise before the animation phase kicks off. I still plan on fixing this walk cycle up before adding it to my portfolio.
Despite it not being a group project, I always wish to listen to feedback from my peers as I value people’s varying perspectives. This helps inform my creative choices as this is something that I find to be important within and without art.
At times I feel very down about my work, which is maybe the biggest thing hindering my ability to create sometimes. I feel that I am aware of it though, I see it and I know it – but I also see that my work has many imperfections. I try to find comfort in knowing that the imperfections are sometimes what I myself enjoy the most when viewing others’ art. But when it comes to the fundamentals and my overall technical ability, unfortunately that is just a part of the process and I have to trust that I will improve as long as I keep going.