Intro
From the start of first year I think we were all aware that our final project of final year would be a short film, which I have been eagerly waiting for since starting the course. I admit that ever since the very first group film we did in 2D in first year, I knew I would want to do my final project as a 2D film.
I made the decision to do a solo project for my film. I very likely would have made that decision no matter what, but if I had to cite any influence towards this decision, it would probably be not overly enjoying the group project with game design in second year, however in first year I did very much enjoy the group projects, especially the 3D film in term two (shoutout “The Good, The Bad & The Bugly”).
For the last number of years and throughout my whole time in uni I had planned for my final project that I wanted to make my film from A-Level that never finished production due to covid. So, when we first presented our idea by standing up for a few seconds to tell the class our rough idea, I said something along the lines of, “My film will be about a warrior who is tracking down a demon that he himself accidentally released from hell when he was there himself to forge his powerful sword.” Despite the changes made to the idea following this I am glad I got the opportunity to create a fantasy/medieval themed short film completely from scratch with my own characters and premise.
Prep
My A-Level Film was stop motion filmed using hand made figures and hand made sets. However that specific idea for my final year film did not progress too far other than I began to draw the protagonist in 2D in Krita. I had a very insightful chat with Mike about my film idea in the week leading to the pitch presentation. He rightfully pointed out there would be a bucket load of complex animating to do, especially as upwards of fifty percent of the film would be high speed fight scenes. He suggested instead I should rework it so that the story still follows a warrior hunting a demon, but this time it literally follows the warrior as he recollects a past encounter with the monster. Over the that week I developed the story into it following a warrior as his boat slowly floats down a river, as he looks upon several old wounds and scars which briefly take him back to a devastating encounter with a demon when he was much younger, concluding with the man finally facing off with the demon and defeating it.
To bring it back to the lecture about story, the demon killed the man’s son and destroyed his livelihood, therefore he has returned to put an end it, but in doing so must willingly confront and overcome the monster that nearly killed him the last time they met.
The title for the film has always been “Old Wounds.” Originally just quickly thought up and thrown into the pitch presentation as a working title, but I never changed it as it suits the story well… man looking at his “old wounds” as he prepares to face down the demon that gave them to him. Also it is the name of one of the campaign missions in Black Ops II and I thought it sounded cool.
For the protagonist character, from the get go I decided that one of his wounds would be a missing hand, lost in his first encounter with the demon. I took slight inspiration from Guts from Berserk for this aspect of the character, a lone swordsman, missing a hand, hunting demons. For the character’s build, (which was important to nail down as he appears largely shirtless in the film) I modelled his body after Goku, specifically the version from the Dragon Ball Super Manga. This was easy to follow as I am very familiar with the style of DBS manga and honestly it just makes my character look cooler.
There are two designs for the protagonist… older and younger. I used aspects of my original A-Level figure to influence both. The younger version’s clothes matched the colour scheme of the model, then the older version has long hair and a beard, like the model.
The demon in my film I had always planned to be a big, muscular, pitch black monster with red eyes. The lack of detail to keep the demon more imposing and create a sense of mystery and also sheer evil/darkness.
My main two influences for the demon were the Balrog from The Lord of The Rings, and the Chernabog from Fantasia. All my early designs for the demon had big wings, but later removed because by having the character pitch black with no details, the wings mostly just hid the figure and made it look like a big triangle.
I had narrowed the demon design down to a pitch black muscular humanoid body/frame, and was stuck between tow heads. Both heads exactly the same aside from the position of the horns, one being pointed up and the other being curled downward like the Balrog. I originally landed on the latter but it was correctly pointed out by Aodhan that it very much looked like I was ripping off the Balrog, especially as for the inside of the eyes and mouth there was going to be a flame effect. Also with the horns down it had the same effect as the wings in that if the demon was viewed side on you couldn’t see them against its pitch black head, so, I went with the upward pointing horns. So in the end the demon turned out to be an even split between the two influences, big humanoid muscular frame like both, big evil, angled eyes like the Chernabog, mouth like the Balrog, upward pointing horns like the Chernabog, then fire coming from within it like the Balrog.
The last character created was the man’s son. This came about late in prep. Originally the demon would ravage the man’s village and kill a load of people, but after some tutor feedback I switched it to the demon killing the man’s son, which made the man’s motives for return a lot more personal and it made the story tragic.
I can’t say much research or influence went into the son’s design, I just drew a generic design for a child and went with it. However, the child would have a toy/doll, (which is is seen in the rubble when the man returns to his old destroyed house) which took a lot of design influence from the ‘child’s doll’ from Skyrim.
Pre-Production
Pre-Production spanned roughly from October to after Christmas break, in that time (as my film is 2D) I created the backgrounds for my film, finalized full detail character designs, a shot list and an animatic.
My shot list went through a number of moderate changes before it was finalised. At one point my film contained sixty three shots, quite different from the final product which has fifty shots. The majority of these changes surrounded the man’s son and village, it was technically a couple of weeks into pre production that the idea completely changed from being in a village to just being the man and his son on their own in one isolated house in the woods. For a long while in pre production, the man would be actively travelling down stream in his boat and arriving at shore would be the prompt to leave the boat and head into the woods towards his old house and the demon. I eventually changed this so that the boat from the start would be stopped ashore next to a path leading into the woods, and the prompt to transition to the scene of the man entering the forest would be a gust of wind coming out of the path and a feint rumble/growl of the demon being heard, prompting the man to get in the zone and head toward it.
As mentioned I finalised the character designs.
Young Man: Short hair, clean shaven, light green/beige shirt, grey belt, wrist straps and boots, blue trousers.
Older Man: Long, tied up hair, beard, light brown trousers, dark brown belt, boots, and wrist strap, long grey cloak which he would remove near the end of the film becoming shirtless, large healed chest scar and healed stump/missing hand.
Demon: Tall, wide, large muscular humanoid frame, two large upward pointing horns, three fingered, clawed hands, two toed, clawed feet, (all claws grey) completely pitch black apart from eye holes and mouth which have fire burning inside them.
Son: Very short, curly/puffy hair, long green shirt, beige trousers, brown boots, carrying light brown toy/doll with big dark brown eyes.
The animatic took a number of weeks to complete, similar to the shot list, it had several versions as I worked on it alongside the shot list, meaning when the shot list changed so did the animatic. It also changed after multiple bits of tutor feedback every week, largely related to timing of shots.
After several weeks of feedback and a couple of progress presentations, the animatic was complete and I could fully move on to creating the backgrounds over Christmas… at least that is what would have been ideal. Admittedly, I did nowhere near as much as I could have over Christmas break but luckily there was still time allocated for pre-production for a week or so after returning so I finished the remaining backgrounds then.
The way I went about the backgrounds was mostly the use of 2D assets. As the film is set in a forest, I created ten sperate trees which I used to build up the background of scenes. I essentially was working with twenty tree assets because I could mirror every single one individually which more or less made a new tree.
I created one big starry night sky background which I was able to use repeatedly when the tops of the trees could be seen. The limited amount the sky is visible throughout the film meant the big sky I drew could be used multiple times at different zoom levels and different angles and still looked unique. I created one more sky which is visible in the second last shot of the film, which is a shot of a nearly risen sun.
Three different assets were created for the boat, one side on, one over the shoulder looking down and one for the man’s POV when he looks at his missing hand. I made the boat look more detailed than the art style of the characters, just to add a touch of realism and also just a way to try and show off what I hope is artistic ability. I used the same few brushes and textures, keeping the colour scheme identical across the three boat assets so it would convincingly like the same vessel.
Another background I made is the view the man has from his boat of the path leading into the forest.
The last two backgrounds I created were of the house.
One is an asset of the whole front outside of the building, which could then be used at different zooms and angles for different shots. The design I went for is a stone base for the first floor then above it is the second floor made of wood which sits wider than the first floor, being supported by wooden beams in the corners. Don’t really have a reference for this other than getting a basic idea by searching for “medieval houses” on google images. The top wood overhanging the stone base was off the dome.
The other is a dedicated background for the shot of the man and his son sitting by the fire in the moments before the demon first appeared. Similar to the boats I attempted to make this background a bit more detailed, utilizing several different brushes and textures to make it more realistic.
In the film I submitted, the space above the mantle is a blank wall. This was originally not the case as firstly I drew a mounted deer head, but it was quite disproportionate and had a lot going on detail wise so was a bit distracting. My second attempt to fill the space was to have a painting hanging up, so I redrew an old painting of a boat my Granny painted what must be at least two decades ago now. My version by itself I think looked quite good, but to reiterate, that is on its own. When implemented into the scene, the colours contrast a bit too much from that of the house background so it stands out quite a lot and could be a distraction, so I removed it as well. Before the end of year show, if I find the time I hope to add something rightfully suggested by Aodhan, such as a shield or something similar that would match the colour, tone and time of the film.
Production
Production began properly after all of the assets and backgrounds had been created. Up to this point, there was still some consideration towards giving the demon some slight highlights just to emphasize its frame and things like muscle definition, but ultimately I stuck with the complete pitch black look. This was later than expected as in my film if you go to the Krita file, all of the front facing full body shots of the demon if you turn off the black coloured in layer you can see what its physique actually looks like.
For the fire that introduces the demon and also the fire the demon breathes, I didn’t want to just use two regular orange and yellow pens in Krita so attempted something similar to the boat assets. I used one specific brush that draws sort of like a paintbrush. The main two colours used in the fires are orange and yellow but I must have used at least five variations of both and at many different opacities to get the fire to blend well and give it a stand out, violent looking appearance. I achieved the flicker effect of the fire by alternating two drawings of it every two frames. I used the same technique when the demon entered both times, by drawing its figure completely two times ingulfed in flame, which I alternated every two frames the same as the fire to give the flicker effect.
I was able to use the same fire animation a few times over at different sizes and angles which saved a good deal of time while animating.
The son was bar far the easiest of the three characters to animate. He barely moved in his scenes and most of his animation was related to facial expressions and crying. I also found him the easiest to draw. I think that was because with the demon and the man, they took reference and inspiration from other things, (not to mention the man is quite detailed) whilst I came up with the son in my head and used the first design idea for him that I thought up. By that deduction you could probably say that the best example of ‘my art style’ (character wise) in the film is the son.
The most difficult character I found to animate was the man. A detailed muscular frame mixed with my ever present lack of ability when it comes to drawing people at angles other than face on, but despite the time it took I think it turned out alright in the end. One of the main things I ran into trouble with was the man looking symmetrical from behind and from the front. It was a tremendous “eureka” moment when I remembered about the big mirror tool that stares you in the face on Krita. With the man I didn’t stray from the art style like I did with the fire and the fire in the demon. For the man I just used the regular old pen tool on Krita to draw and colour everything on him. I Think the worst part about animating the man is the shot when he runs out of the house. I sat for ages making a somewhat presentable run cycle, (I achieved it by cutting the pre drawn arm into two parts and having them move at the elbow and shoulder like hinge joints) just for you to only see one or two cycles of it as he runs toward the camera at which point you can’t see his arms or legs anymore.
I would have to say my favorite part of animating in the whole film was when I rotoscoped a clip of myself pulling a sheet off my shoulders and throwing it away, for when the man pulls his cloak off when confronting the demon at the end of the film. I had Originally rotoscoped the entire motion of raising his arm and puling it off, but I could never get the arm raise to fit the proportions of the man but the cloak throw looked really good, so what I did was stop wasting time trying to fix the arm raise and had a simple animation of the man raising his arm from side on, which leads directly into the part of the rotoscope when he throws the cloak away. Another bit of rotoscoping that I cut was from the same sequence, where after the man has thrown off the cloak he reaches down and draws his sword. Due to timing I decided to cut this aswell, as after many attempts to make it look right I was not really getting too far in terms of body proportions, so what I did was stop that shot after the man has thrown off his cloak, then in the shot of the demon directly after, I lengthened it and have edited the sound of the sword being unsheathed while we are looking at the demon, which it reacts to by raising an eyebrow. To further draw attention to the sword being already out when it cuts back to the man, I added a small glimmer effect to the top of the blade.
The final rotoscoped shot itself and surrounding sequence, in my opinion, came together well and looks pretty smooth. The only negative about the rotoscoping is how much time it takes to draw that amount of frames, which ended up being wasted when I did not end up using them, but the accompanying animation in the end makes up for it, besides over doing it with rotoscoping when the rest of the film does not have any could come off uncanny, so it is probably a good thing that a chunk of it got cut out.
Another change I made late in the game was the idea of impact frames. Until very late in production, when the demon cut the man’s chest I was going to attempt some some type of flashing, black and white swiping impact frame. It sort of looked alright when it was in the animatic but I could never make it look good and it didn’t really match the tone of the film. What I landed on instead I think turned out much better. Going back to the tone, the film is already very bloody, so I decided to not an “impact frame” but a literal view of the impact from inside the man’s flesh, supplementing the already existing blood and gore in the film. By doing this I think it helps emphasize how brutal the injury actually is and help the viewer feel how painful it is. My influence for this was from some old I think BBC documentary about Dinosaurs I had on DVD many moons ago, I can’t find it but I vividly recall two specific scenes, one in which a Triceratops sticks a T-Rex with one of its horns and you see it from inside the T-Rex’s belly, and another similar scene in which a velociraptor sticks its claw into an ankylosaur’s neck and you can also see it from the inside.
All throughout my film I wanted to hand draw the lighting, like how characters in Dragon Ball look. Meaning for both the man and the son, once they were animated and coloured, I had another colour palette for both of them with a darker shade of every colour used on them, which I then highlighted them with as best as possible to create realistic looking angles with the light. It also helped massively to add physical depth to the characters so they looked more 3D rather than just straight, flat, one colour 2D. I was able to do this easily as for every time I drew a character they would have at very least two layers. I would draw and animate the initial just black lined layer, then duplicate it and add the colour to the one underneath. I find this looks a whole lot better than just using the fill bucket tool on the on layer, as it allows the lines to lay strong on top and none of the colours mush together. For the shadows/highlights, sometimes I would add them to the colour layer and sometimes I would add them to a third layer that sat in between the colour layer and line layer. No real reasoning why I would do two layers sometimes then three layers the other times, just happened.
Throughout production I was able to keep to an organized schedule by typing my shot list up in excel. I would, number, write out and colour code every shot. Red meant not done, yellow meant nearly done, green meant done. By doing this it helped me to break the film down into what felt like smaller chunks so it did not feel as daunting and it also helped me keep track of what I had done and needed to do incredibly efficiently. Leading into post production I added another column to the excel sheet to effectively track what sound needed to be added for submission.
Post-Production
I was fearful I would have to rush the sound editing on my film but luckily I asked out of curiosity to what level it needs edited, to find out the only sound required for submission is plot relevant sound, such as if a character reacts toa sound and you need the sound to be able to tell what is going on, for example when the man draws his sword while the camera is on the demon, you can hear the sound of it and the demon reacts by raising and eyebrow. So I can focus on tidying up the creative futures module this week and get my display set up, then dedicate the couple weeks before the show to nail the sound editing for my film.
Going back to my excel sheet for tracking, I implemented a new column for what sound needs to be added for the submission. They are colour coded as well. A shot with orange beside it means it contains plot relevant sound that needs added ASAP and the specific sound is noted down beside it. Then bright blue is shots like this that have been completed with the appropriate sound.
I am doing all of my editing in Premier-Pro. I started by making 50 separate folders, numbered 1 through 50, then I went through all fifty of my shots on Krita and individually rendered it as an image sequence to the corresponding folder. This did not take too long once I got into a rhythm and I am sure there is a method that is a million times easier and quicker but I will learn whatever that is for next time.
One of the main points of interest throughout all levels of production is how the warp to the past would be conveyed. In early stages I though maybe put an orange filter or some kind of effect on scenes set in the past. Another idea I had was to have some big effect flash/play when it warps to the past. Like a literal warp effect such as a whirlpool or something like that. These ideas were mostly motivated by the though of making sure the flash to the past was obvious. Thankfully upon completing the animation, it already looks obvious that is what has happened just by watching. However it was been augmented in post by adding a kind of whoosh/fizzle sound, (I am not going to attempt to spell it) to signify the scene has “warped” back to the past.
At this stage in the editing I have not landed on music to use yet that fits but I will have that completed in time for the show. My main idea for music is when the title fades into frame in the first shot of the film. I am hoping to use something that sounds similar to a part of the theme of the 2005 King Kong film. It sounds like what I think is some sort of horn playing down about five low notes in descending order. It sounds dramatic and I think may fit and set the tone for my film. I have been unsure about music for the rest of the film, as not many sequences go in long enough for a dedicated score without feeling like its been rushed in, such as in especially the first two thirds of the film when every handful of seconds there is a cut to the past.
My film will however be rich in ambient sound effects, such as a flowing river and general forest ambience.
Reflection
As always with a huge project like this there is always a lot to reflect and think back on. Many things that I know I could do differently and better in the future. I just about gave myself the right amount of time to complete the project but I 100% could have went about organizing my time better. I was organized brilliantly in terms of tracking everything in excel but I could have done the same thing for my own timing, such as create an excel of days and allocate one or more shots or things to work on each day. This could have broken down the timing perfectly and I plan to do that for any future projects. I could also have thought before doing things more often. Such as when I was rotoscoping a scene and trying to accurately draw the man’s proportions over my own and I ended up spending many hours on it just to scrap it in the end because it didn’t look any good. Then going back to Christmas break I could have done a lot more work then and set myself up better for returning to class instead of leaving myself with just one week to sort out the majority of the backgrounds.
On a more positive note I did very much enjoy the whole process from the beginning. Coming up with ever changing ideas and drawing up unique characters from scratch then being able to bring them to life in the final product. I feel as though I have become very accustomed to the way I animated this film and if I had to start it from scratch I could complete it in half the time, as most of the techniques and art styles are second nature at this point.
To reflect as well on my time in this course it has been great fun from start to finish. Which can be credited to the brilliant lectures who are always available to give round the clock support and make every class a joy to be a part of.