Rough animation test

Hello.

Since we last posted on here, there have been all sorts of distractions, business-based and otherwise, and so development has slowed down considerably. However, we've nearly completed a rough storyboard, and I've started animating a bit of it.

It helps me to do little animation tests as early as possible, as it gives me an idea of where I can tweak the designs of the characters to simplify animation. Wherever there's something about a character that makes it a pain to animate, I simplify it as I'm roughing out the animation, and the character I end up with at the end of the project is usually much more streamlined than anything I could have come up with on paper.

It's visible here, I think - the King, at the end of the animated gif, has a noticeably more consistent shape and sense of volume.

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A Synopsis

Before we go on, I feel I ought to elaborate on the story a little bit, otherwise all this lacks a significant amount of context.

The idea for The Wall came about through a dream Estelle had, around a year and a half ago. This was during the penultimate year of university, and around that point we were being encouraged to think up ideas for short films to make in our final year. Stell had already devised something (and had started pre-production, leagues ahead of everyone else), and that something became her excellent final year film, Pups. Although initially content to work with Stell on Pups and earn my grade that way (very much playing it safe, as it was a promising-looking project from the outset), I was encouraged to come up with something of my own to work on.

Eventually, I came up with a story which, after many tweaks and refinements, became The Magpie, but before then, I was truly stumped. To give me something to work with, Stell pitched her latest dream to me, and in true Estelle Sharpe style, it was a fully-formed story. She just comes up with these things in her sleep! Not that I'm jealous or anything.


SYNOPSIS
The kingdom's resident intellect, the Scribe, is trying to organise his fellow residents to construct a large wall to protect against intruders, but efforts are hampered by the hands-on, bull-in-a-china-shop enthusiasm of the King. The story goes back and forth, between the King's accident-prone adventures as he explores his kingdom and the Scribe's increasing frustration as his meticulously-crafted plans are literally destroyed in front of him, over and over again.

Ultimately, the Scribe stages a mutiny, and the residents restrain the King in stocks (with a ball-and-chain for good measure). The King easily breaks free of the stocks, and wreaks more havoc than before, now that he has a massive metal ball swinging around him.

The film concludes with the wall being utterly obliterated by the King. The Scribe emerges from the rubble, driven to madness, and proceeds to bicker with the unscathed King whilst a gigantic army amasses on the horizon.

Early concept art for the King, his minions, and his fate.

The original version of the King's animation test, with a colour scheme we've long since discarded.

The King - Colour Test

Here’s an animation test of the King! I wanted to get the idea of the visual style down in a video, instead of having it floating around in my head any longer. Making it a video helps to show the kind of ‘boil’ we want for the colouring – scribbly but fairly precise.
I had an idea for darkening areas of the characters clothes, so that they were still blocked out against the brown background but nonetheless had some subtle variety to different areas of their body. Stell was initially dubious – and with good reason, as the pure whiteness of the characters against the ‘brown paper’ backgrounds was a popular aesthetic choice for this film – but as the video shows, the new colour variety is incredibly subtle. It also gives us the chance to show off a beautiful watercolour wash simulation that we’ve been playing around with lately, adding another gorgeous layer of boiling shade to the lively characters.

I should also mention that although the test was made recently, the source animation is a little older and depicts the King in an earlier stage of his design; since doing this animation, his head has grown a bit (rather appropriately for the character), and there's no outlined shading on his crown. I do, however, like the simplicity of his gown lining terminating at the bottom of his head, instead of wrapping around it as I've drawn in later versions. Food for thought.

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The King

The Wall

Hello! Like the debut album of many artists, this first post is called, quite simply, The Wall. This is a blog documenting the production process of The Wall, a personal project between Estelle Sharpe and myself. Here, we will post concept art, storyboards, animatics, inspiration sources and anything else that seems relevant to the film. Hopefully, it should build up into a definitive record of the film’s evolution, from idea to idea, from pre-production to production to post-production.