In order to effectively shape and style my animated documentary, it is imperative to hone down on a particular style and overall theme to match my documentary topic and address it with an ethically correct yet thought-provoking standpoint.
Interview in Documentary
Traditional documentaries such as ‘The Social Dilemma” highlight the use of interviews and animation in their way of conveying the dangers of online social media presence. the documentary itself uses re-enacted scenes that depict serious scenarios of being overtly online and I think this draws to attention an interesting relationship between the tonality re-enactment can provide within context.
Subjective Experience in Documentary
Some Protection (1988) Could use jerky, not animated frames to convey ideas of things that are occurring in time and space.
The Expressive and hyper stylisation of both some protection and Yael’s Story is something I want to consider utilizing for my documentary while having ‘rudimentary’ art styles that replicate pencils, pens and mediums that can be associated with childish natures, they both take themselves seriously and do not make light of their topics. Due to the serious nature of my own, I want to adopt this.
The New York Times // Conception // Yael’s Story on Vimeo
Set Design and Concepts
Taking this into consideration, and comparatively looking back at my portfolio there is a particular drawing I created in which I would like to see how I can develop this style, given its bright colourful and fun nature and see how I can use this in a more serious context.
Adapting this to my Three interviewees
Taking on some of my old pieces of conceptual art, I wanted to translate the different interviewees into stylised animated characters that I could translate into 3D models or 2D rigs later date. I wanted primarily wanted to explore shapes, and differentiate between the characters and their environments.
Animation Test Style
In order to explore the 2D to 3D translation, I created a quick 2D animated gif that visually represents a speech bubble, giving a visual and graphic indication of which character is speaking at any given moment. Due to the graphic and sketchy nature of the style produced here, I found it an interesting challenge to try and produce this in 3D.
3D Development Tests
My first very rough and initial test for this style was produced by using polygons with manipulated vertices to try to make them appear like a line-drawn piece of art. However, I feel this rendition looks particularly lacklustre and does not have the same graphic feel to it. Researching further into this, I found I could use an Arnold shader called the AI Toonshader, which I intend to explore in the following weeks to see what effect I can create.
My ideas surrounding the ‘looser’ and floating pieces of mesh were that they could metamhorpsise into various shapes that are contextually relevant to the speech. For example in one of my interview auidos, a person states how they packed and bag and made a very long road trip to go and spend lockdown with a specific person. In this light, the speech bubble could turn into a bag. However, I do not think this will be the most effective method when using 3D software, as it complicates the way in which mesh is formed. I am potentially thinking, however, that I can utilise blend shapes to create this, and model two separate meshes that blend into one another to create the smoothness of a 2D transition.