New Film!

Long post incoming! I actually started writing this one a couple of weeks ago, but it took a lot longer than thought/ hoped for several reasons, one being breaking my shoulder! Gutted, because it means I can’t skate for a bit, but I guess it’s just one of those things.

Anyway, enough of than, here’s the post:

A few months on from finishing ‘Bear’, I'm now ready to embark on a new short film. It's a micro short, aiming for 90 seconds in length, with the fantastic DepicT competition in mind. I wanted to make a new film, because full pieces of work are somewhat more meaningful, rewarding and ‘whole’ than creating just test pieces, along with providing a focussed challenge. I chose 90 seconds as it's a manageable format, meaning I can complete it alongside working full time. It’s also something you can submit to festivals, plus another thing you can add to your CV as a filmmaker. It shows you can make work on your own initiative and demonstrates that you can complete a project from start to finish, which is actually more of a big deal than it sounds. You’ll probably know this is you’ve made complete films before (or stopped midway). Yes, test prices have their place (I sure do enough of them), but a complete short film is a great format to aim for, too. I’m a filmmaker, so making actual films makes sense!

This film isn't actually rotoscoped (gasp) nope, it's one of my experimental pieces. I tend to do these alongside rotoscope work, which you’ll know if you’ve been following my work for a while. If you’re new to my stuff then hello, welcome and I hope that you stick around! Here’s my most recent experimental film, which I completed in 2019, or was it 2020?:

The concept of this new film is pretty much just moths. It’s a flicker style animation (not sure if that’s exactly the right term), but it’s when separate images of similar things are put after one another, and when played through at say 12 or 24 fps, it gives an effect of the image changing or warping. If that make sense. So in this instance, I’ll need to draw just over 1000 separate images of moths (no big deal) and have them playing at speed to create the desired effect.

I get the inspiration for a lot of my films from my surroundings and this one is no different. A groundhopper friend of mine is into collecting moths or ‘mothing’ (I think is the correct term)! Once when he was enthusiastically talking about the aforementioned hobby, I thought that moths could make a really nice animation idea, and now, several months later, I am putting it into reality.

Before going into this project, I wanted to do a lot of R+D, because I don’t want to get halfway through and decide that this style isn’t actually working and have to scrap the whole thing- animation takes long enough as is, let alone if you have to re-do any of it. Plus if you’re in it for the long haul, you want to ensure the style you’ve gone with is right and fits the project. Sometimes I feel I might not do enough as I’m too eager to just start animating, but with this one being such a short film, I know I have the time to really develop it and get it right.

I decided to use Procreate for the bulk of the drawing this time round, for several reasons. Firstly, as wonderful as Callipeg (the program I use most for animation) is, the brush options are unfortunately quite limited, meaning I wouldn’t be able to get the desired texture/ look for this film, compared to other programs with a wider variety of brush options. TVPaint was also out of the question for this, because I wanted to be able to do this project in a fairly portable manner, especially with Christmas coming up, along with the cold weather, meaning I might want to work elsewhere other than my desk in my freezing cold office room. So, the only other option I had to use was Procreate. I purchased the app around a year ago when I bought my iPad, but never really had the opportunity to fully utilise it, besides a few concept pieces for ‘Bear’ here and there and a few other bits and bobs.

When I was exploring it prior, I definitely appreciated the variety of brushes and thought that I’d love to be able to utilise this app one day for something animation related (I don’t really do illustration or anything). I have tried out animating with it, but for me, the timeline isn’t very intuitive for animation, with all the layers being on the side (I get it works for some people, but not me- maybe I’m too old fashioned)! But, this project is more of a collection of separate drawings than stringing images together in such a way that they animate if that makes sense.

So once I decided on the software the first task was trying out a load of brushes- a process I always find fun, though I have a tendency to get distracted easily whilst doing so as there’s so much to explore!

Above are some of the brushes I tried out in the first instance- really testing out different sizes, styles, textures and opacities. Once I felt had explored enough, I imported them into TVPaint to see how they’d look in a sequence and against 16mm film- something which I had in mind to use as the background for this- due to it’s properties reflecting those of a moths- colourful yet translucent, plus the abstract nature of the medium. Though this might not be how I decide to finish the piece once I’ve drawn all the moths- I have a few other ideas in mind, but that’s for later anyway. Here’s the test in video form, plus it will give more of an idea of the concept/ how the finished piece might look:

In most of my animations, I use a brush with a thick, hard, solid outline, so as it’s a way of working I gravitate towards, that style came up in my tests. After playing it through several times, I decided that it was in fact too harsh and didn’t really reflect any properties of moths- something which for this animation I felt would be necessary. After reviewing them, I knew I wanted them to be more delicate than some of the styles I had been working with. I then went back to the drawing board and selected three further brushes after much more trial and error to do some ‘deeper’ testing with.

I wanted to make 6 moths using each chosen brush to see how they’d work in sequence. It was no good just drawing one or two, when the whole thing is going to last over a minute. I’ve found whenever I do style frames for previous projects, they might look good as a still image, but sometimes it doesn’t always translate to when it’s moving. So in my tests in style, when it comes to finalising the look, I always like to do at least a couple seconds of movement.

The first brush I tested was ‘Eaglehawk’, though I quickly decided that I did not want to pursue this one any further. I thought it looked more appropriate when auditioning brush strokes, but when it came to drawing full moth with it, it wasn’t giving the effect I was after, so I quickly disbanded this idea.

The second brush I tested was one called ‘Gloaming’. Here’s one drawn with that brush:

I quite liked it and it was definitely more delicate looking than my previous tests, but it still wasn’t quite right. So my search continued.

Lastly, the brush I tested was called ‘Wild Light’ (under the ‘Artistic’ category), which is the one I have decided to go for. At first I tried it with the opacity set to 60%, but after drawing several in this manner, I changed it to 100% and these looked well, urm 100% better:

This brush gave such a lovely, textured feel, yet dark and solid enough so it didn’t look too ‘weak’, and transparent enough so it felt somewhat ‘moth-like’ (I am definitely going to start using that phrase regularly)! I loved the frayed, bitten edges, which for me resembled the markings on a moth. I can’t wait to get stuck in! Now I just need to come up with a workable pipeline…

I really liked using Procreate for these tests and I’m looking forward to using it when I start this project properly. It’s very user friendly and great for this especially, because it allows you to flip layers, meaning I only have to draw one side of each moth, too- therefore cutting down on some work! I want the look of this animation to be very symmetrical because I feel that way it will work best, especially for when each image changes to the next.

Hopefully I’ll get a decent start on this over the Christmas break- will do some updates on how I’m getting on over the next few months. I have no idea how long it all might take, but I might try and aim for say 20 moths a day- or one hour of work perhaps (though obviously more over the time off).

Anyway, I guess that’s for me to figure out!! Not sure if I’ll post again before Christmas, so if I don’t, then have a great one if you celebrate it, have fun and stay safe xo