When the project began I was slightly unsure on exactly what I wanted to do .I settled on creating an animated trailer based on my pitch bible with the same premise, I thought this would make the process quicker as I already had a story and characters planned out so it was more efficient since we only had a month to work on this project.I came to the conclusion that if I ended up not liking the trailer I could turn it into a sort of opening for this hypothetical program.

short recap form pitch bible-

Fairy Strange is about Naomi Sato, a Japanese American 18-year-old girl who struggles to make and keep friends due to her bad attitude. One day a shooting star falls from the sky towards the ocean and Naomi runs to the scene only to find that it wasn’t a star, but a magical fairy called Star Berry. Star Berry tells Naomi that she is the chosen one and takes her to a magical fantasy world called Twilania, where she defeats evil and at the same time learns about the value of relationships, friendship and how to be a better person.

The idea itself is inspired by many magical girl anime’s which usually involve a group of girls who have magical powers.

I looked at many examples of different trailers to see how they were edited and what really stuck out in them. Trailers often highlight the most important parts of the series or film you’re being advertised without spoiling the plot entirely so I tried to keep this in mind when it came to the story boarding process. I also looked at video edits where people take their favourite series and edit it in an appealing and satisfying way timed to the music . 

I also looked at music videos , one music video I was very inspired by is “Siamès my way” . The rendering style I thought was perfect for the feeling I wanted to try and achieve in this project . It involved a lot of dark backgrounds with a vintage grain added to it and also a very glowy surreal effect. The character designs were also very proportionally correct but also simple and slightly resembled the anime artstyle but was still unique on its own. I wanted to try and replicate this.

EXAMPLES-

MUSIC VIDEO–

Story Boarding/Animatic-

I looked into a lot of different songs that had a dreamy vibe to them so it would match up with my concept, I ended up choosing this song because I thought it fit the best-

When it came to story boarding I struggled a bit as it’s not my strongest skill , I had episodes planned out in my pitch bible so I tried to take some basic premises from those episodes and incorporate short animated sequences to match them. I thought some important story beats where whenever the main character “Naomi “ gets propelled into the sky by the character “star” and is transported to another realm.

Other important story elements were whenever Naomi sees the shooting star in the sky . 

I wanted to show Naomi whenever she enters the other realm so I incorporated scenes of her confronting the monsters from the other world and then also her transformation sequence .Normal magical girl transformation sequences usually involve them changing into their magical girl alter ego by changing outfits , but I wanted to make it a bit more interesting by having a visual representation of her becoming her new self by bursting out from her old body as her magical girl self . In hindsight this was a very difficult thing to animate and I might of changed it to be something slightly less complex .

I wanted to include more of this symbolism in the short trailer and since this is a portfolio project I wanted to challenge myself so I included a scene where she looks at her self in the mirror and is confused at first at the sight of her new self , but smiles because she likes what she sees . 

I also added in a scene where she’s climbing the stairs only to get to the top and see something and is surprised . This was to add more suspense and make the viewer want to know what she saw at the top of the stairs. I noticed many trailers use that tactic .

I had created an animatic at the very very beginning of an idea I had had for the trailer but I ended up disliking it so I completely scrapped it.the original concept was going to have a bit more explanation of the story and it starts out with Naomi hiding in the school bathroom stalls while she overhears multiple girls talking badly about her. This was because I originally wanted a bit more context but I decided to change it to be a bit more mysterious.

Scrapped animatic

My Movie 167

draft 1

Draft 2

My Movie 152

Draft 3

I went through much trial and error with the story boarding and animatic and kept taking things out and adding different things in. All  together it came to around 40 seconds (ended up rendering about 30 seconds) . I didn’t want to spend to much time on this as animating was the more important part of the portfolio.

CHARACTER DESIGNS 

when it came to the character designs I experimented with some different art styles since the designs where pretty much already finished , although I thought the style could use some work. I went for a more western cartoony artstyle that had more details on their designs but ended up opting out for an artstyle not to far away from my original pitch bible concept designs . I wanted to change them however to be less anime and to be more of its own thing and look a bit more cartoony. How I changed this was that I took away any sharpness the characters had so they were round , even the spikes in the characters hair was rounded off. I also simplified the faces to have less detail.

original designs-

Experimental design-

I wanted the designs to be a little more inspired the the music video . I also thought this style would be easier to animate in comparison to the original designs and the redesigns.I ended up lining the lips while animating as I thought the lips looked better in the artsy or when they where more defined. ( in hindsight I actually noticed stars hair felt a little but harder to animate since it no longer had a defined shape an was rounded out)