Stylistic Inspiration
My initial inspiration for motion and stylistic interpretation derives from 2D ‘puppet-like animations such as South Park and the works of Lotte Reigner. For example, below is the piece ‘Cinderella’ by Reigner (1922) the works rely strongly on the flat silhouette to imply motion. An idea I wish to expand upon outside of my premise project is to create puppet-like movements within 3d space, essentially creating a 2D rig within Maya.
Below highlights the setup for such a 2D rig, In which all of the different manipulatable limbs are separated into layers, in which they will be exported separately and exported into photoshop, where alpha channels will be created. After assembling these into Maya, the rotation pivots will be moved similarly to the motion of the puppet, aesthetically.
Environment
A big inspiration for the concept of the more cartoony and 2D reminiscent background was work from the series Adventure Time’ and ‘The Midnight Gospel’ which capitalizes on a rounder, softer and colourful shapes to accentuate its otherworldly-ness and fictional nature. I think the contrast between fictional audio and the unrelated crazy magical world that is presented in work such as the midnight gospel creates a very interesting individual use of the animated documentary which Is something I would like to test and consider for my own project. I think, by confronting a viewer with something so crazy and unrelated to the real world, it forces the animated documentary’s performative nature to be so evident to a viewer it does not try to be fictional and embodies the relationship between the real world and the experimental and how they can combine to address something of importance. I feel I can use this contrast to create an ironic distance between people’s time spent locked inside and their address on the mundane and the bright and colourful world they wish or intended to live in during this time.
Environment Drawing
Similarly to the earlier mentioned character, the environment will need to be created in layers, so that a foreground, midground and background can be extracted. This is essential as, in the process of movement, different parts of the environment move at different points due to distance and eye recognition. For this to look achievable I will need to create a ‘parallax’ in which the foreground, midground and background do not move as a single piece of geometry, but move as separate layers to create the illusion of distance.
An important consideration when creating the illusion of distance is colour saturation and shadow, as the foreground will be the most focused and saturated, and the opacity and shade will cascade into the distance.
Placing the character into the environment, I want to make it clear to audiences that this environment matches this interviewee’s character by stressing square shapes, that match his face and tonally the whole world is engulfed in tones of blue.
3D Environment Integration
Placing these into Maya, allowed me to experiment with layering and distance as well as camera angles and movements. For this process, I integrated temporary placeholder 3d objects to allow for early composition considerations.
I also discovered early on that my drawings were not long enough to cover a large distance of space since I decided to create a shot that pans to the right. In this light, I decided to duplicate and extend the road to allow space for a car to travel downwards since a car journey is directly referenced in one of my interview audios.
below is the initial playblast test that helped me understand how the camera and environment parallax will work within 3D space and allows rough composition set-up for environmental modelling.
Below are some added 3D assets such as clouds and tree models to help start integrating the 3D assets within the ‘2D’ scene. I think this process allowed me to understand compositionally that some 3D objects will need to be moved to allow for further depth of field, and highlights considerations down the line of using more 3D models than 2D planes to build a more convincing animated world.
Issues and Solutions
While in theory, I understood the concept that PNG files do not render within Arnolds render, I initially struggled to be able to get differing file types such as Tiffs and Jpg to work cohesively with alpha channels in Maya. My initial problem was exporting the alpha channel somehow invertedly, which highlighted several issues with my understanding of exporting photoshop alpha channels.
Starting fresh, I created an image plane, added an Arnold texture and added a UV Planar unwrap. I created a UV Snapshot and opened this file within photoshop.
Following the below tutorial helped me understand where my previous issues were lying, and it was predominantly related to the aistandard surface settings. When extracting an alpha map from photoshop, once loaded into the ‘geometry’ tab of the aistandard surface, it utilises the alpha map and applies the alpha channel to the image within Arnold’s renderer.
After following the tutorial I was able to successfully apply and render the image plane within ‘Arnold’ with the alpha cut applied. This allowed me to go on to create several render tests to understand how I will assemble and blend the 2D and 3D drawings together effectively.
Below shows the initial render test with some of the stylised models I have created, and indicates some important steps for me to consider going forward next week.
- Firstly, I think learning and applying the Aitoon shader will help blend the models into the background more effectively.
- Secondly, Applying earlier 2.5D tests of utilising the 3D model’s adaptation of my 2D drawings will allow me to animate to the lip sync.
- Assets such as the ‘car model’ need to be created
- Further render tests
Abstract Lines and Colour
While not explored for my premise project, I have brainstormed potential background ideas that expand on the abstract nature of ‘fantastic’ environmental representation. I could adapt pieces of work by artists such as Kandinsky to create floating shapes and colours to accentuate the contrast between reality and subjectivity in the background of the animated performance.