30.8.2022 - 20.9.2022 (Week 1 - Week 4)
Chung Yi Ki / 0345014 / BDCM
Film
Studies & Cinematography
Exercises
Lecture
Week 1 / Introduction and Module briefing
This week during our lecture class, we are asked two questions by Mr. Martin
about our personal thoughts on animation as an introductory session. Below are
my answers to the two questions:
What I love about animation?
I love that animation has a wide possibility for storytelling. There's so much
potential and so much you can do with this medium, even fantastical things and
wild ideas that would be near impossible to achieve in live action. Plus,
animation can be as expressive and exaggerated as it wants and this made the
story to be more engaging can the audience more emotionally involved. To me,
animation is a form of escapism from the real life world.
Why do I want to be an animator?
I choose animation as my specialization because after having experience in
doing other fields of design (graphic design, character and environment
design, illustrating etc.), I like the process of making animation the most.
Although it is a tedious process, but seeing the work come to life at the end
gives me a big sense of accomplishment.
I also started out with video editing in the world of creative media, so I
like working with time-based media more and that influenced me in being more
partial to animation. The storytelling potential of animation is another thing
that attracted me as I'm a person who likes to tell and make up stories.
Sharing my favorite animation
I have a lot of favourite animation but the one that has a special place in my
heart is an animated series called "Steven Universe". The reason is it's the
one that made me start exploring with video editing and brought me into the
world of creative media. It also has made me explore creative works of other
fans of the show and in turns, inspiring me to create my own work and further
improve my skills.
The storytelling of the show is also the main aspect that I love the most
about the show. The way how the world is built, the characters are written and
how all of those influence the plot is able to draw not only the attention of
the audience, but the feelings of the audience as well. The characters are
written in such a human way, as well as their expressive acting that added
into the believability of the story, is able to make me to be emotionally
invested in them and in turns, see myself in their struggle.
Tasks
Week 1 (30/8/2022)
This week, we are tasked to watch all the episodes in season 1 of an animated
series called "Love, Death and Robots", and discuss our 3 favourite episodes
in terms of their cinematography. My personal favourites are Sonnie's Edge,
Good Hunting and Zima Blue.
Sonnie’s Edge (Episode 1)
Fig 1.1 Arena entrance scene showing luminescent tattoos
This episode is visually stunning and captivating. The elements chose to be
included in each scene serves a purpose to advance the plot or reveal a
certain twist, and the mixture of close-ups and wide framing for these
scenes help to focus the audience’s attention on them. For example, the
gradual revelation of the tattoos on the competitors gives audiences a hint
of what each character represents, such as the snake skin texture tattoo on
Sonnie and her beast which has reptile-like attributes. The high angle to
show the holographic projector in the fighting ring shows that the MC is
just a holograph and the close-up of Sonnie when linking with her beast to
show the information that her consciousness is being transferred.
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Fig 1.3 Red backlit elevator scene, enhancing tension Source: https://www.gamingoverdoseplus.com/post/love-death-robots-has-been-renewed-by-netflix-for-a-second-season |
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Fig 1.4 Red backlit room scene, enhancing danger and tension Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9781722/ |
The episode also used colour, lighting and camera movements to enhance its
storytelling. Colours and lighting are used to set the mood of the scenes,
such as red to represent danger and a backlighting or dimly lit environment
to enhance that tension. Camera shakes are added in action scenes as well to
simulate the movement of handheld cameras used in live-action filming. All
of these are done in a realistic way to complement the show’s realistic art
style. This will further convince the audience in thinking the scenes are
believable and thus enhancing the impact of the realism of the show’s visual
direction.
Good Hunting (Episode 8)
Fig 2.1 Clip from the episode showing use of rim light, atmospheric colour and
art style direction
Good Hunting has a stylized cartoonish style as opposed to the realistic
style used in Sonnie’s Edge. But a similar characteristic this two episodes
share is that both are of the drama and action genre, and both depicts
violent graphic. Although Good Hunting uses a cartoonish style, this doesn’t
lessen the impact of the action and violent elements as its cinematography
complements the art direction by using exaggerated elements as well. For
example, the lighting is harsher where the edge can be seen to give more
depth and volume to the 2D characters.
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Fig 2.2 Some example use of colours in the episode Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9788498/mediaindex/?ref_=tt_mv_close https://www.intanibase.com/iad_entries/screenshots.aspx?shortID=58971 |
The episode also relies on using colours to set the mood for each seen. For
example, dark blue tone to represent mystery and the night sky, yellow to
represent a sense of welcoming, green tone to represent a sense of
wickedness, red to represent danger and pink to represent lust. The show
also used a lot of rim lighting to give a dramatic effect and also a
majestic look to the characters. This, paired up with the show’s 2D stylized
art style, give a legendary folklore feeling to the episode.
The choice of camera angles helped to push the story to be more engaging as
well. Medium shots and close-ups are used to show the character’s emotion or
important plot points in the story, while wide shots are used to give
information about the world the story is set in. All these helped to
increase the drama of the scenes and keeps the audience immersed with the
plot.
Zima Blue (Episode 14)
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Fig 3.1 Screenshot of a scene to show the style of the episode Source: https://www.intanibase.com/iad_entries/screenshots.aspx?shortID=58977 |
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Fig 3.2 Monotone colour palette scene Source: https://www.intanibase.com/iad_entries/screenshots.aspx?shortID=58977 |
Zima Blue also used a stylized 2D cartoonish style for its art direction,
but it is done in a way where the design and colouring style of the episode
reflects a comic, modern art style look, which is fitting for the story as
it is about a thought-provoking journey of an artist. The genre of this
episode being science fiction also benefited from the art direction as the
art style made everything looked futuristic. The character and background
design of the show composing of simple shapes also gave the episode an
abstract look. The episode also frequently used similar or contrasting
hues of muted colour, creating an ethereal look to complement the tranquil
and breathtaking feeling of each scene.
Fig 3.3 Zima's artwork getting larger - Part 1
Fig 3.4 Zima's artwork getting larger - Part 2
Fig 3.5 Zima disassembling himself from a tall self-aware robot to a small
simple pool cleaning robot
The episode played with size and proportion a lot, showing the changes of
Zima’s artwork style getting bigger and bigger, and in the end, Zima’s own
body getting smaller and smaller. The camera framing responded to this
change by using wide shots framing for big objects, and medium shots or
close-ups for smaller objects. This gives a contrasting feeling of grandeur
and inferiority, where the subject of focus gets more and more insignificant
towards the end of the episode, thus giving a shocking ending.
Week 2 (6/9/2022)
For this week in-class activity, we are tasked to choose 2 emotions from
the emotion pie chart
that Mr. Martin provided us. After that, we randomly picked a theme from a
list of themes and chosen a genre to create a concept art. We are given 1 hour
to create the artwork.
Selected 2 set of emotions: joy and surprise
Theme: Innocence
Genre: Fantasy
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| Fig 4.1 Concept art outcome |
The idea for my concept art outcome is a scene of a kitten meeting a dragon in
a forest, and is awed by the sight of it. The style is simplistic and very
cartoony to stick to the theme of innocence. The light shining through the
scene adds to the amazement of the emotion of the kitten.
Week 3 (13/9/2022)
This week we were asked to choose a number between 1 and 2 and is tasked to
create a concept art in landscape full HD of the video that corresponds to the
number we chose. The video that I ended up with is an animated short film
called "The Return of the Waves" by Gobelins.
Fig 5.1 Full short film video
In short, the film is about being stuck in past memories of a relationship and
trying to move on from it. Before making the concept art, we were asked to
identify the emotions, theme and genre of the film:
Emotion: Sorrow, dismay, acceptance
Theme: Love and loss
Genre: Coming-of-age drama
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| Fig 5.2 Main scene screenshot reference |
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| Fig 5.3 Final concept art |
For my concept art, I wanted to show the film's concept of the main character
bring a "ghost" in reliving his past memories, where he is shown to be in blue
outlines without shadows while the people in his memories are in normal dark
outlines with visible shadows. I reversed the roles of that concept in my
concept art, where the main character is seen in normal visual representation
while the "ghosts" of his memories are all appearing around him.
I referenced the scene layout in Fig 5.2 in the concept art to show that the
main character is walking back to town where most of his relationship memories
took place. Two of the ghost memories reference to scenes that happened in the
film (him leading her to something in a market and them having a beach day)
and the main character looking at his camera while walking shows that he
attaches his memories to the camera and is reliving it.
Week 4 (20/9/2022)
This week, we were tasked to redo the concept art that we did in week 2 and
week 3. The redo can be quick sketches of the concept art.
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| Fig 6.1 Week 2 concept art redo |
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Fig 6.2 Week 3 concept art redo
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Fig 6.3 Matching visuals with description
For in-class activity, we were also tasked to find concept art or any visuals
online to match with the scene and character description provided in a Google
sheet.
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