503 - Vertical Slice

While KK and Ceylin are focusing on character for the vertical slice, I focused on the background. To start, KK and I got in a call to generate the 3D layout for the scene:

(Kahenya's work with my direction)

A problem when creating this was that KK had 2 separate 3D files, one for the room that was detailed, and the other for the street and buildings. This scene required both, therefore he had to quickly merge the two together, as you can see above. This meant that thing's don't match up 100%, but as it's a vertical slice I think it's ok. To remedy this mismatch, I drew over the 3D layout correcting some things and adding other elements:

Next, I created some colour thumbnails and a black and white one to get my values down, and to explore possible colour variations for the building:

This is a night time scene therefore it needed to be dark, however it is also the Girl's building therefore I didn't want to make it too creepy as her's is meant to be the cleaner side of the street. On the flipside, having it look a bit creepy is good as it reflects on the creep more than the girl. These are just thumbnails therefore the painting is not neat, serving more to give me an idea of what colours to use.

I really liked the greenish one however I felt that was too creepy. The pink one I feel doesn't suit the profile that much, as it would look very out of place on the street. The first orange/purple one is more suitable and still has a cleaner feel with a hint of creepiness, so I decided to use this as my main inspiration.

Here is the final painting I did:

Doing this served as a style guide as well as gave me an indication on how long these BG's would take. This one took me a day and a half, however the first one always takes the most time.

As you can see, I toned down the colours a lot compared to the thumbnail. I went for a more realistic colour setup instead, which fits the film's style better I think. To avoid making these backgrounds too creepy as well as distracting from the character, I opted for a cleaner painting style, using the lasso tool to get very sharp edges. This also compliments the urban setting of the film. Despite this, I wanted to avoid everything looking boring and flat so I spent a lot of time rendering the shapes within the sharp selections, and for the bigger areas (like the building itself) I allowed myself to be looser and show more brushstrokes.

Overall, I think this BG fits the film's style very well.

Things to improve on in this painting:

• The bathroom light - it appears too flat and lifeless
• The cast shadows, particularly of the top most balcony
• Include more details - I found I went for the bare minimum rather than enriching the scene with character and life

The final step for the vertical slice was to composite it. We were aiming to get this done for a feedback session with Mat, however KK was delayed and therefore I had to composite and colour the rough animation within an hour, so it's not perfect but I feel still fits the style of the film I had in my mind:

(My work except for character animation, done by Kahenya)

I think this was very successful overall. I really like the creepiness of the camera sway and slow zoom in, and the character fits well with the environment. I think I should have made her darker however as the light from her room will silhouette her more. I think to really embed her within the enviroment, I could add a cast shadow for the girl.

After showing it to Mat, he has no qualms about it, therefore the next step is to do the layouts and colourscript.