Making of JellyKitchen Ident
This is the first project I committed to post University, I am extremely grateful for to JellyKitchen for the incredible internship that resulted in this Animation. After the demoralising delays of Trespasser, this short really helped me get my mojo back, and remind myself that I am capable of making some really great animation!
Pre Production
During pre production, I got feedback to change the ending to something more short and snappy, so I cut the eating part, and had them transported to the end world instead. This was defiantly a good move, the ending is easier to follow and has much better pacing.
the Animatic was a chance for me to clean up the camera angles and get the backgrounds blocked out, I was so pleased with these layouts I animated directly on top of them. The Animatic is such a close match to the final short.
Animatic
Making of Trespasser
Trespasser was my 3rd year thesis film for University, due to the start of the end of the world it has had significant delays and setbacks, but I hope to have it finished before winter.
This film has been an exiting challenge, where I could attempt new and interesting things, for example I used 3d software to layout each shot to ensuring proportions were constant and allowing me more freedom with the camera and higher quality cinematography.
Character Design
Jane and Poppy are the protagonists of this film, living together in the home targeted by the trespasser. I wanted these 2 to have an interesting dynamic together, balancing each other out. Jane is powerful but insecure and quick to freak out, so I used sharper, longer shapes in her design like dynamic but unstable triangles. Poppy of the other hand is much more delicate physically, but has a strong will and quick mind, she calms Janes anxiety, so circles make up her design, soothing and flexible.
First Animatic
I had intended there to be dialogue in this film but I also wanted to audience to be able to follow the film without any audio, so this first animatic was made silent.
This turned out to be a mistake, while it is easy to follow the silent film, getting audio early on would have helped greatly. As it is, the film just doesn't suit the new audio and I've now adapted the film to have no dialogue. I wish I had picked a lane at the beginning of this process rather than now, I could have focused my efforts and saved a lot of time.
3D layout
Creating the set in 3D was the smartest decision I made for this film, the idea first came to me when I considered how I could achieve a convincing moving camera in a 2D animated film without giving myself an awful amount of work. If I animated the moving camera in 3D I could render out the shot and trace the moving background in each frame, this is the reason the 3D layout is so detailed, so that the tracing would be more consistent.
I realised that if I laid out each shot in 3D I could not only have better consistency in the backgrounds, but I could also play with the depth of field of the camera and add Dutch angles to exaggerate the emotions of each scene. This lead me to roughing out the entire film in 3D, using placeholder models for poppy and jane to make sure their scale was also consistent.
Animatic with 3D layout
Examples of finished shots
Unfortunately due to the events of 2020 I had to take an involuntary hiatus from working on trespasser. Luckily I am now in a position to continue work on my film and I am extremely exited to have made progress on it after such a long time.
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