504 - Vertical Slice

I wanted us to have a vertical slice done before production started, to make sure that the style fits and is clear, and also to give us a peak at what the final film would look like. 

I first created the BG for it, using the watercolour test as inspiration and using references:

I'm really happy with how this BG turned out and how I achieved my aims for it. Instead of drawing the BG traditionally and scanning it in, I used procreate instead. This allows me the freedom of digital layers (so that I can separate BG, MG and FG) whilst I can use more realistic pencil brushes to create that sketchy look you get from traditional. 

I then took it into photoshop to paint it using a watercolour brush for most of the BG, and a pastelly brush for the tree branch. I wanted it to look rough and sketchy whilst still seeming complete and I think I achieved that. 

I also ended up making it more saturated than I originally had it, as it was more visually appealing. Finally, instead of having blurred elements like I originally planned, I created that same feeling by having elements in the BG be more washed out almost, having the colours blend into each other more so the shapes are less distinguishable. This works better as it looks more organic, and also allows me to distinguish between depth of field blurs and artistic choices.

I found this workflow for the BG to be much smoother than tradigital, and it still looks somewhat traditional too. Also, I made sure to separate the work into layers for compositing, so that I can create some motion and make it feel more like a full scene.

Olivia then animated and flat coloured a scene from the film, which I took and composited it to create the final vertial slice:

(Olivia's character animation)

I'm really happy with how this looks, and I definitely thinks it fits with our film's contents. The BG meshes very well with the animation, and despite it's saturation and messiness it doesn't overpower the bird. I think using the texture overlay on the bird helped bring the scene together.

For compositing for this scene, I animated the BG movement using the wiggle function, and colour corrected the bird and added the texture overlay. I also added a saturation increase in the background of the BG, but I think that's very subtle.

Despite the success of it, there are areas I need to work on for the future scenes:

• The character animation didn't exactly line up to the BG, so I need to make sure that my layouts are final before uploading them, and that they are very clear, and also make sure that the animators use the full layout so I can just drop the animation in and it'll be automatically lined up
• The BG was exactly 1920x1080, therefore I had to enlarge it to add the wiggle. I should take this into consideration for the actual scenes and make them a bit larger than they need to be in order to composite them.
• The BG although split into layers was semi transparent, therefore I couldn't move each layer around that much. I don't think that's much of a problem for these kind of scenes as the movement is very minimal, however it reduces the flexibility I have, and also for scenes with camera movements it may pose a problem. I should make sure that the BG is painted and makes sense layer by layer rather than paint it collectively

I definitely think that having an idea of what movement there will be in the final shot is very important when it comes to compositing, so it works out well that I'm doing both that and layouts. I find that I really enjoy bringing a scene together and adding finishing touches to make it polished.