Ink Tests

Here are some tests I did today for my backgrounds with the ink flowing in.  Being the after effects noob I am, I'm kind of happy I managed to pull this off :p The first four ink spreads are taken from the awesome video posted below.  I wanted to try out different kind of ways ink can spread and see what kind of look/ effect it gives.

The last video uses a ink dropped in water video- a little too liquidy for my taste, but what I DO like is how the ink seems to bleed in more color instead of the background emerging from blackness, which is what the first 4 tests do.  Not sure how i did that, but I was just playing around and it happened.

I'm planning on filming my own ink on water videos so I can better control how I want the ink to work.  I love the look of ink spreading on paper more than ink in water, so I decided I'm going to go with that look. 

 

 

 

 

SOO COOL!! Ink water art

I WANT THAT EFFECT ON MY FILM

More style frames!

Ext of orphanage? might make it more stylized and blurry.

Below, I tried to simulate an impression of how it would look like with the watercolor seeping in.

Original watercolor!

Carn- More amazing inspiration!!

I saw this film yesterday and fell in love with it immediately.  The story and look is so simplistic yet so powerful that it almost brought tears to my eyes. The use of silhouettes for both the boy and wolf for the majority of the film is brilliant, and the composition in each of the shots is well designed and dynamic.  I love the use of the same colors for certain elements- red motif for the scarf and blood, blue for the hostile, cold backgrounds, and the fiery brilliant sky at the end marking the climax.  Great stories can truly be told with just the right colors and cinematography.

This film as great because it reminded me of the power of silhouettes, which I had more of in my first animatic.  I remember one of the professors said keeping him in a silhouette at some points in my film and maintaining that simple readable shape could be a distinct feature of my film, and this was a good reminder that simple is better.  

Check out the film through this link: https://vimeo.com/search?q=carn

Below are some film stills I think are soo incredibly beautiful!

I love how absolutely creepy he looks. 

LOVE the silhouette!!! Simplicity tells story best. 

Bloooood red. LOVE the mountains in the background and how to converge to the midpoint. Works great to draw our eye to the wolf.

This bright fireball sky definitely got me. He's dead center but the composition works well in creating tension.

Just love the trail of red blood and how everything is blocked out in black.  

Great birds eye view.  

Love how straight and rigid the trees are.  It works to enhance the mood of the film.

Again, great use of simple characters and dynamic deep background. 

More concepts!

Experimenting with colors for the ending sequence! I really want to play with pastels, calming, kind of vibrant colors. Also working on composition! Not sure if I was too successful here.

Experimenting the with the grainy effect, which I really want to use for the beginning of my film since it will start of black and white.  I wanted the outside to look purposely blurry and drippy, as he is not really seeing anything but putting together his own interpretation of things outside. I was also playing with silhouettes as well, trying to keep it simple but graphic at the same time.  Going to experiment more with this look. 

Sherlock Holmes Inspiration

Today, Michael Patterson showed me this really cool trailer of Sherlock Homes ending credits using the combination of ink splotches, tonal paper, and beautifully inked drawings, to create that running ink effect spreading over a picture.  It is almost the same effect I want to get with my thesis, just with more color.  Loved it!

Centerpiece!

My friend helped me model my centerpiece, which  I will be painting over later on :)

3D bg tests

Today, I built a rough model of my whole set in Maya so I could play with the camera and see what interesting camera angles I could get.  Mainly to help with composition and dynamic angles.

Background tests

Today, I played around a lot trying to search more for the look of my film specifically for the scene in the streets- more like how to execute it technically.  am I going to just digitally draw them? Hand draw them? Or a mixture of both? After today, I found that the best option is painting my backgrounds traditionally first and then brining it into photoshop and tweaking it.  

I have a clear image in my head of how I want my backgrounds to look- no detail, flowy, colors meshing into one another,, vibrant but soothing... but when it actually came to designing and trying to get the look, it was much harder than I thought it was.  After many failed attempts, I finally achieved a look I more or less liked.  Going to keep experimenting!

The shapes and colors are a little too muted here, but I like the contrast of light and dark. 

This was so fun! I literally just bought my painted piece in Photoshop and changed the hue--- thats's about it. And this happened- I really like how it turned out!

Another one of my painted backgrounds painted over slightly digitally- I added a color dodge on the right, and it gave it that nice magical glow.

Same thing but with no color dodge. 

UPDATES on storieeee

This past couple of weeks, I've been working on ironing out some story glitches and trying to shorten my long ass animatic which apparently was running at about 5 minutes.  I managed to cut it down to 4 minutes ish! Below is my updated animatic.  Some things/ shots are still going to change, but for now, I'll post it as is.

Some things that have changed:

I believe I'm going to start of the film with him holding the music box with the center piece in tact.  There is not revealing of the centerpiece in the end.. too complicated

The guitarist in the end will not be his father- again to complicated.  It is going to be a random person he meets and shares a moment with. Short and sweet.