Carrying forward from our previous pitch presentation and feedback, I began environment, prop and character design for our film along with my peers. I had been feeling incredibly burnt out and pessimistic about my work and my skill level, and therefore achieving these pieces felt a lot like pulling at teeth.
Environment: Interior
I began by mapping out some possible birds-eye views for Charli’s space, and then blocking those out in Maya; I aimed to have something to trace for perspective so that I was able to generate concepts quickly:
(These are all mine barring Amy’s street signs and cafe blockouts top right.)
The first ref I created was really used as an excuse to get into Rebelle, which is known to be the software that spiderverse used when creating their movies. It was an exercise in looking at the types of painterly textures that it could generate:
I lined the interior blockout that I made and painted from there; I actually submitted this piece of work to Leana Hillen, who was kind enough to give us some painting workshops, for feedback:
This feedback, along with some feedback that Alec provided, showed me that this piece was much too textured and – in places – saturated. It is an incredibly distracting painting and it does not properly convey the night time.
I collected some more ref for my next attempt:
I tried to be a lot more subtle with my painterly textures in this ref, and really reduced the saturation – this is because these effects won’t be as striking whilst Charli’s in the ‘real world’, we want her ‘comfort zone’ to give the impression of gloominess, as if it’s not a safe place.
Environment: Exterior
I wanted to add a concept to the collection we have of the exterior in the ‘real world’ and put Charli into the concept to see her there:
This was to get an idea of her in the space but also to play around with potential colour palettes – specifically looking at warm pinks and peaches around the Hilmore Art Academy.
I’m not super happy with how flat and boring these look, however as this needed to be generated quite quickly they’re sufficient.
Environment: Exterior Abstract
I also wanted to try and provide a piece of concept work for the abstract sequence; here I made a version that was more ‘normal’ where I tried to focus on overbearing buildings and creating a sense of how small Charli feels in these scenes – I also did a version that is more painterly in order to experiment with painterly brushes:
Playing with colour and lighting here was a lot of fun, but I’m still not convinced that these are exactly what we’re looking for – again, I’m not convinced in my skill level to generate paintings to the standard of our reference. However, I do like the lineart used in these – I think this is something that we should attempt to carry forward.
Props:
I created some props with the following ref in mind:
I wanted our props (particularly key props) to carry forward this saturated sort of look, with some painterly aspects – I particularly enjoy the idea of LOD and graphic reduction – this is something we will have to consider whilst creating our assets:
I’m pretty happy with these designs as concepts; they are perhaps a bit complicated, however, a scaled-down version of these might be quite nice.
Character:
Charlie’s design has been narrowed down and chosen; we looked at the following as reference:
With the ref, I moved from previous designs to look at a more spiderverse rendering style:
Considering these silhouettes, we all loved a number of these designs but we decided to keep on iterating and try to reduce the complexity for sculpting whilst also keeping the rocker/mosher art vibes (whilst being slouchy and comfortable in her lounge-wear) we wanted for the character:
We all agreed that we loved the first design here, and Josh came back with some feedback on this, following some suggested updated ref:
We received further feedback from Alec that potentially we should rethink the tattoos, or rather, reduce them – this is something we were all willing to accept, and we have Charli’s finished design:
I also made some headway on our approach to sculpting, having a call for advice from Mike Cauchi, who gave me a lot of amazing pointers and resources:
Finally I have completed some preliminary tests in some ways that we can start to think about texturing our assets:
This workflow involves painting normal maps to achieve painterly strokes – this allows for the base colour to appear painterly, and also for the strokes to be influenced by the light. I followed the following tutorial for this:
I quite like this workflow, it feels very intuitive to me as a painter and I liked the results. However, it is quite time consuming – I’m not confident that we could do this for every asset. Perhaps we could limit this to key assets and props, though? I also need to remember the influence of value in this approach, the darker values should be placed on areas of the object that will not be lit, and vice versa – it looks a bit odd on my test, that the light and focal point is dark in value due to the normal painting.
I moved on to trying shaders in blenders node view – I am a blender novice, I don’t understand how it works at all but I managed to work this out after a few hours of bashing my head against a keyboard:
I think this is probably a much more efficient way of achieving what we need, however it doesn’t look as good on my cup asset unfortunately – not entirely sure why that is, but we definitely have those painter effects, at least, for this test!
This following technique might be a good way of getting painterly textures for further away objects that do not have a lot of base colour, as it was a really simple process:
All this required was baking the normal maps in blender and then exporting them into photoshop and applying a painterly texture. This is just a default filter, but we could look at buying much prettier textures to apply. This technique gets a bit tedious if the asset is more than one colour, however, so it might be an idea to restrict this workflow to minimal assets with not a lot of colour involved.
Finally I played around with Blenders new brushstroke plugin, which gave some really interesting results.
Going Forward:
Unfortunately, one of our team members has decided to take a year out; as such, we’ve had to reassess our scope and our duties. I will be creating assets, as defined, and also looking at building environments along with Adam whilst Amy will be taking on sculpting our character and the bulk of the animation. This is something we will have to look for further advice on from Alec and our lecturers.
After a meeting in Established a couple of weeks before classes started, our group was excited about the prospect of creating an in-depth and detailed environment that would aid storytelling, with a very light narrative. We quickly came up with the idea for a city densely populated with skyscrapers, with one central skyscraper holding a rooftop jungle. This early concept included one main character, a child, who would progress through this environment and interact with it. In our final scene, our character discovers a sea of industrial skyscrapers exists beyond the parameters of their safe natural jungle home. We were particularly attracted to the idea of juxtaposed aesthetics.
As the concept grew, I suggested (this was actually my husband’s interpretation of the initial concept when I presented it to him) that through this idea we focus not only on an obvious theme (industry and man-made taking over natural spaces, our pollution and the ever-growing concern of global warming) but also on a metaphor; the natural space (the jungle, forest, garden) would be symbolic of a ‘comfort zone’, a safe space, somewhere that our character retreats to get away from the pressures of the outside world. The external, contrasting city of industry could represent the external worries and anxieties we all face as a fallout of societal expectations.
We pretty much immediately began collecting references and creating a miro board (https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVKhYpiOk=/?share_link_id=324230682108):
Environments and Environmental Story Telling
Environmental storytelling is something we’re all keen to explore, especially in the early stages of this project. As such I started to paint some concepts for environments:
Here, there were concepts for how the natural area may look and how it could contrast against a cityscape; we also loved the idea of portraying a more sci-fi look with the skyscrapers, referencing the garbage-towers in Wal-e amongst other things. We moved on from the idea of a rooftop jungle to the potential that an overturned tram or subway or train might be our character’s comfort zone. With these thumbnails, I wanted to make sure to try and nail composition and make a real effort to create good and communicative concepts that also attempted to tell a story as best as I could. Environment painting is something that I’ve really been trying to improve on in personal work over the past year, and I hope that the experience of painting more concept environments for our final year film will bolster these skills.
Please see below for the tutorials and YouTube videos that I consulted during this:
As our concept developed, we realised that the idea of a comfort zone vs. external stressors was a theme we wanted to refine. However, we recognised the nature vs. industrial aspect was no longer aiding our story; we all wanted to focus more on this idea of fear of our anxieties, and the strength and courage it takes to overcome them. As such, we decided to give our character more of an identity and more of an active role in our film. We wanted the character to be an extension of ourselves and our peers, therefore we decided to make our character an artist. The external city would be metaphorical of everything that the character fears but also everything that they long for – connection, self-acceptance, confidence, positivity, socialisation with their peers, and creativity (this is up to interpretation, it can be anything that the viewer connects with should they choose to take meaning from it). The character’s art studio apartment would be representative of a safe space that they hide within, in isolation, that is often used as an excuse not to overcome their mental and physical blocks, and push themselves to venture out of their comfort zone. We hope to have these two settings act almost as secondary characters: the city ultimately being ‘the good guy’ and the comfort zone ultimately being ‘the bad guy’. To insert a space in which the journey to overcoming their anxieties could be set, we also added our ‘abstract world’ as a means of introducing what could be interpreted as ‘the mentor’ of the hero’s journey. Within the abstract world – which would essentially be in our characters’ imagination – we want to heavily experiment with different pipelines, visuals, and techniques in this area; we want to push the boundaries of what we can do artistically, just as we want to communicate pushing the boundaries of our character’s emotions. We want this area to initially be terrifying and overwhelming, jarring, and a sensory overload for our character; ultimately, the abstract will teach our character that the potential that the city holds far outweighs their fears, and their reliance on their comfort zone. This lesson will inspire them to take control of their future and step out into the city that inspires them and excites them so much.
We want to have the city ‘speak’ to our character and have played around with the idea of neon signs flickering, potentially spelling out ‘Hi’, something that our character takes notice of. This is in need of more concept art and development, but as this ‘character’ cannot have a physical voice, we thought this would be a fun way to show that the city is inviting, friendly and good.
Internally, the comfort zone also needs more concept art, however at the moment I’m thinking that whilst the character loves it almost as a security blanket it should be quite messy – it should be a space that would cause anxiety in and of itself; the mess is not conducive to creativity or clear thinking and good mental health. I quickly painted this concept after this thought:
Within this area, through environmental storytelling, we see that she is painting and drawing the same views over and over again – views from her fire escape, drawings of the interior of her studio, things that she can ONLY see from the comfort of her safe place (this could include things like signage and graphics if we choose to attach these to the walls). We want to try and communicate that these drawings are frustrating her, so I played with the idea that there might be lots of scribbles and crosses and self-deprecating words on her work and on the walls. These drawings and paintings are the same views because she won’t leave, she has no other point of view. She ONLY knows her comfort zone. As artists, it’s common knowledge that you have to collect a range of different experiences, and journey to different places, (physically, metaphorically, mentally) to get different ideas and different inspirations; this is ultimately good for our creativity, and as a result, our mental health and wellbeing. Only having one point of view is limiting, creatively stifling, and almost claustrophobic both literally and figuratively – over time, only one point of view can lead to us creating ‘bad art’, just as it can result in bad mental health.
The comfort zone is safe and enjoyable however it is not necessarily good for our character – it’s not good for their artwork, it’s not good for their mental health, or for their social life.
(Please see below the discord conversation when playing around with these concepts narratively:
We intend for our abstract to mirror our character’s sketches and paintings; at the moment we like the idea that this area would be really sketchy or linear, like the character is inside one of her sketchbook pages or in one of her canvases’:
Through experimentation, we’ve been doing a lot of 2D markmaking trying to create a mark-making atlas, and converting these shapes into brushes which we could potentially use to texture our 3D model and environment. With this we’re hoping to engage in some collaboration with our uni course and lecturers; we want to try and collect different marks, made by different people. If we can use all of these marks somewhere in our environments, it will feel as if everyone who takes part will be represented somewhere in the film through their stamp or their brush. As this is a short film that is supposed to be reflective of the experiences that everyone could be experiencing, it feels really suitable that we almost get a little bit of everyone in there somehow.
The Character
Initially, we imagined that the character would be a child. Set within the natural environment, we loved the idea of child-like innocence being represented, unknowing of the outside stressors beyond the parameters of their forest/natural comfort zone. We looked at references from Brave, Coraline, and Little Nightmares.
I also loved the idea of referencing Max from ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and ‘Sweet Tooth’; I really leaned into the idea of playful clothing that were animal themed or fantasy-themed: Hats with ears and puddle suits with horns, and also with very saturated, fun and playful colours:
Here are some of my early concepts:
However, as our narrative developed we realised that it made more sense for our character to be aged, and to be more representative of ourselves. Therefore, we settled on Charlie.
For Charlie, we initially looked at a lot of references for utility and tech wear:
Here are some of my concepts based on this new character:
Charlie is not set in stone quite yet, however we have made the decision to pull back on the overly baggy clothing with ease of sculpting and rigging in mind. We have also been playing around with the idea of ‘stereotypical’ art aesthetics that might be tied to different types of artists (i.e. Graphic Designer, Fine Art, Film and Animation etc.)
Feedback to Consider
We were given feedback after our presentation. One bit of criticism was the necessity of our character being an artist, however since – demonstrated in the explanation above – I think we have managed to articulate why this is an important personality for our main character.
We were advised to pull together colour scripts, and that we should allow for much much more time in visual development in our schedule, as a lot of the meat of story takes places in our abstract aesthetic (the main setting for our sequence) and it will require a lot of experimentation.
This feedback is something that we aim to address going forward.
