Beneath the Night Sea

Shot Progressions

Here are some shot progressions from my film.

Beneath the Night Sea frame counts

Making 2D animation equals a lot of drawing. Below is the total number of hand-drawn assets that went into making Beneath the Night Sea. I triple-checked them to assure their accuracy.

Character animation - 1304 drawings
I split the character into two layers to make it easier to animate her follow through (hair/dress/fins). Here's this frame count broken down into pieces:

     Body layer - 588 drawings
     Follow through layer - 716 drawings

Backgrounds - 182 drawings
This number comes from multiple planes of parallax in some shots; as well as a hand-drawn move through space, which was 132 drawings.

Jellyfish - 480 drawings
They're not quite characters or backgrounds, so I counted them separately.

That brings the total number of drawings to 1966. Note that these were all drawn on paper, scanned, and then colored, one by one.

I also included animated lighting on the character, which was traditionally animated in Flash to save time. I animated both highlights and shadows this way, and ended up building many layers in each shot, so the total number of shadow/highlight mattes was 2864 images. This includes only the frames which were drawn from scratch. I'm not including the dozens of layers animated in After Effects with masks, because I didn't draw those.

If you count the digital animation I just described, excluding the non-hand-drawn elements of course, the final amount of drawings that made it into this project is 4830.

4830 drawings / 102 seconds (the length of the film) = average 47 drawings per second.

Another exclusion I decided not to count is all of the animation I made and cut out, but I think I'll leave it here.

Senior Project - Concept Illustrations

Senior Project - Week 8

Here is a current look at my drawing stacks. The left stack are in-progress animation frames, and the right stack are throwaways. It looks like the left stack is catching up since last time. 

My current estimation on the total number of character animation frames is 750, including held cels and animation on separate levels (for example, having the hair continuing to move once the animation has stopped). This number may be off, but it's in the ball park. Actual body animation will probably be 600-650 drawings, which oddly was my estimate at the beginning of the semester. Presently, I have 364 drawings made.

Animation Passes

I have heard differing opinions on whether or not to use separate passes for different body parts when animating. For this project, I'm experimenting using a large amount of separate passes, starting with the most important pass(es) and working from there. So my character is broken into up to seven separate passes per frame: the body/head, face, complete hands, legs, dress, two fins, and hair. Several of those passes are at least roughed in during the key animation phase; the hands are drawn as circles, the head is given its guide lines, and the legs might be drawn simply on some key poses. At this point the process seems to be working well for me and is allowing me to work on individual passes of different scenes as I am inspired to do so.

Once the scene is scanned, the process continues: the character will then need to be colored, the colors might need tweaking within After Effects, gradients and shadow maps will be added to show light, shine will be added to her eyes and hair, and some subtle blush will be placed on her cheeks and nose. 

An example containing a few of the mentioned animation passes. None of the passes in this image are final.

Senior Project - Color Script Update

I was told the next pass of the color script needs to be more indicative of the final outcome, so here is what I came up with. It might not be exact, but it's where the project's at right now.

Senior Project - some progress

Four weeks in...

The stack on the left are drawings which are "getting there." Not quite tied down, and perhaps missing some limbs or facial features, but are at a place where those things can easily be added. 

The stack on the right contains all of my previous attempts and scrapped drawings so far. I'm sure this stack will continue to grow as the semester goes on.

Final style guide

Some small tweaks have been made in places since the previous version. This is the version which will be on the wall at Digipen this year.

Senior Project - Style Guide

The character sheet needs color, and the color script isn't finished, but this is basically final. The project also needs a name.

Senior Project - More Color Studies

These are getting a bit better. They still need work.

Senior Project - Developing Buildings

Here is my process for developing the background buildings so far. This will be more refined as the designs become final. But I thought I'd share how I've been creating these buildings, perhaps mostly as a way to keep track of it myself.
Try to ignore perspecive issues; this was done quickly and freehand. This is just a basic setup.

This process could also work for a row of buildings, where the design of one building flows into the next.

Senior Project - Color Studies

I did 15 color studies for far for the background, and these are the better ones. None of them are giving me the mood I'm going for, though.

Strangely, or perhaps obviously, I like some of them better when there is a character within the frame. This is a somewhat more accurate representation of the final look (though without anything being final).

What I really need to work on with these now is leading the eye using tonal value.

Senior Project - Rough Environment Concepts

Senior Project - Rough Storyboard

Here is a rough pass at the story. Still in progress, of course.

Senior Project - Character Designs

I'm revising an earlier character to star in my upcoming senior film. So I was doing some designs to try and discover how she should look. It's still in progress; I haven't locked down the proportions yet.

Sketchbook - Building Design

I was having problems designing the city for my upcoming senior film, so I decided to do some quick sketches of real buildings that matched the style I was going for. I'm liking the sail shapes and arched entrances.