Ew, Ya nasteh: Dystopia & Utopia Animation 3

I had worked on the stop motions with my classmate Marcin since we're both interested in animation and animation can be done alot better and quicker with more than one person. Having already done 2 previous stop motion animations, we were told to develop our ideas further, to 'throw it up in the air' and experiment with our work and ideas. We discussed ideas for what media we were going to do this in, stop motion like the times before with clay or paper cutouts, but then we discussed the idea of doing a computer animation, a simple version of animating. By this it means drawing main scenes and shots, movement but only slightly, a cut down and slightly choppy looking animation/movement, most of the movements would be done in editing.

We both wanted to do something different with animating and move on from stop motion, to then do something digitally since we both had home experience with animating on PC/Mac.
With this in mind we did some research online into some animations that we had already seen or find. We wanted to find good examples we could use for research, so we looked for ones that had a simple style to them and with choppy movement or mostly made up of still frames since this is what we planned to do since a fully animated animation would take too long.

The first animation is a parody of How to Train Your Dragon 2, containing spoilers, I've used this as part of my research because of the style of animation. The style has very simple line work, colouring and shading with a choppy, still and low framed animation style while having a cool, interesting and understandable look and motion to it, along with ok audio over it which sounds a little low in quality, but it still works with the animation.

The second video is another parody animation, with spoilers, based on a fantasy, 8 bit based game known for its multiple endings depending on choices the player made. This video is a parody and prods fun at one of the endings, boiling the complicated, serious like story into a loud, comedic and dramatic cartoon. The style of the overall animation is mainly still frames, only a few scenes having scenes after each other to look like movement, but also having frames where the audience imagines the movement even with the choppy style of the animation. This kind of style in the animation is the kind of thing that we were wanting to do.

The third video is another parody, undertale based animation, I've seen the idea that's involved in the animation has been redone and reused a few times with different themes, though the voice acting isn't the original. Like the previous ones, we liked the look of this animation and used it as research and reference, though it consists of pretty much still frames, kind of like a storyboard kind of style with sketchy like linework. Though even with its style and look, it's still able to put across a small sketch of a story and entertainment.

Starter illustrations of characters and some pose practice
examples

To start production for the animation, we started by doing a small scrap script that lists the theme, where the animation would be set, the technology involved, what will happen in the story etc. We both gave ideas and worked on writing a kind of list/intro of how we wanted to have this animation and what would happen in it.

The concepts for the characters, trying to make them look
different from each other with different styles and
personalities

Once we had done this we then moved on to making some illustrations and concept art and drawings for the animation, this included the buildings and monuments in the city that's in the story, the kinds of people, fashion, gadgets, the environment, theme colours, expressions, hairstyles, some body positions etc.

We both worked on making characters to determine how we wanted the main characters to look as well as background/civillian characters that would be in the animation aswell. We tried to range their looks as best we could for the kind of animation we would be doing, which doesn't require too much detail or diversity of characters for it, having different facial structure, eyes and hair. Inspiration for the concept characters was mainly from mainstream looks, alternative, clebreties, game and show characters etc.

Photos of references we used to make better drawings of
shoes, clothing, poses etc.

Character design, experiemtning with expressions, facial
structure, fashion, drawing from different angles.

My classmate Marcin worked on the main theme of the world, the buildings, fashion and some people, getting the main theme down without too much research. The theme colours being of aquas. blues and or greens as a highlight against the main colours of greys and silvers. The fashion mainly consisted with tracksuits, bodysuits and sportswear kind of fashion, being clean, furturistic, almost metallic looking, comfortable and agile kind of clothing.

Fashion of the characters in the animation, made up of
sportswear and tracksuits with colour themes.

I worked on some people and fashion as well, though I looked up futuristic fashion online to get some ideas to add to the fashion of people in the animation. I came across some interesting images and examples of futuristic based fashion and clothing, though I didn't want to have something that was going to be complicated to draw and animate, as well as something that won't stick out too much with the overall fashion and designs Marcin had already done. I found similar designs that would've gone along well as an overall fashion and drew them on some design paper, the fashion of them either being big, loose or tight coats and jackets, though they were still going to be quite complicated to draw so we decided to stick to the designs Marcin had already done.

More fashion research done on graphic paper, trying out
different designs and colours from research.

I was also trying to figure out what the villian was going to be for the animation, though Marcin had the idea of making a pretty basic and obvious villian, being a kind of demon since the world is very spiritual based anyway. So with the idea of a demon in mind, I decided to make a good design for horns it would have instead of having the simple and overused style of goat or faun horns. So I researched into different horn shapes and sizes, animal horns and fantasy horns people had made, I then printed them off to then work from.
I used some scrap paper to try and get the right kind of horns to use and placement of them on a head, we wanted the demon villian to have two different sets of horns on it head, though it took many tries for me to get close to a design we were both happy with.
With the confirmed shape and size of the horns I then experimented with designs that would be in the horns to link better with the world, having dark, metallic looking horns with dark red lights.

Some of the horn designs for the villian.

Once I got a design I was happy to use I then went forward to design the demon, most of the ideas with how it would look was overall advertising of demons throughout media, movies, costumes etc. overtime. This resulted in the demon having a lanky, skinny body but still having some muscle and body mass, to look intimidating as possible, long nails, having a skinny face with skinny sharp edges and facial hair, lower body of ram legs etc.

Designs for the villian, first with the different sets of horns,
then onto the face and look of it before moving onto the body
and its size, shape and colour.

The fashion of the world is furturistic, clean, has theme colours of light grey and blues and greens, having tracksuits and sportswear kind of fashion. The environment is futuristic, advanced in technology, looking very clean, bright, green and nature friendly looking as well as being spiritual with having totems within the city on the streets, next to buildings etc. Marcin made multiple designs for buildings and structures to have included in the animation, this included trees and plantlife, buildings, stadiums, towers, sculptures, totems, light posts, satalights, signals, the paths and roads etc. Most of these would still have the main colour theme of blue/green/aqua colour.

Concept sheet for buildings and structures that we thought
about to put in the animation, listing designs and choosing
which ones to use.

Eventually we moved onto making the storyboard for the animation, working on it together. I did some of the basic line art, so did my classmate, the same with colouring and shading, but I did all of the small quick explanatory text underneath most of the storyboard panels.
We had our illustrations and concept art by us as we drew out the storyboard to keep themes, colours, shapes, backgrounds and characters accurate.

The story starts off with views of the city the story would be taking place, keeping a clean, futuristic look, spirit totems scattered through the city, having two different views before focusing onto the path that starts to shake and crack. Citizens start to panic as the sky starts to turn dark and see a giant demonic creature as it starts destorying buildings, this then catches the attention of two heros' in different places of the city, seeing the creature before running towards it.