First Animatic

The purpose of this project is to act as a style development for my thesis while also being a self contained little film. Thus the visuals will be more important then the story itself. In this animatic, I have attempted to present the seven simple shots that make up this piece as well as laying out a temporary soundtrack.

The animatic comes in two forms, standard and stereoscopic. The latter requires red and blue 3d glasses to view. The final film will utilize polarized projection, which requires colorless 3d glasses similar to the ones used in Sony's BeoWulf. This type of projection allows the filmmaker to keep the quality of the color in the film, but is a little more difficult to work with.

Standard Animatic

Length 1:29, 7mbs

Stereoscopic Animatic (Anaglyph)

Length 1:29, 7mbs

Hatchiman

I have used the character of Hatchiman in several films and stories before. He first appeared to me in a dream, or rather it was myself, standing in a yellow field with green sky, wearing the stitched leather garb.

First drawing of Hatchiman, the morning after the dream (2003)

I am now attempting to use Hatchiman in this project, as I find that he tends to lead me through different paths of self discovery. Thus below, you will find a brief history of his development and growth:

Following the dream, I was intrigued with the character's look and began writing stories with the purpose of figuring what the character was about. I now believe that the stories and comics that I drew were too introspective and thus felt like cliches. It was not until 2003, when I began working on a short animated film called More Human than Human that the character began to take form. In this short , a starving Hatchiman washes off the edge of the earth and is rescued by a Windor (dragon-like creature), who carries him to her nest.

More Human than Human, 2003, 4 minutes

Sensing Hatchiman's hunger, the Windor takes off to find him food. Unfortunately, Hatchiman's impatience gets the best of him. He lights a small fire in the center of the nest, and begins to boil the Windor's children. When the mother returns, Hatchiman burns her and pushes her into the sea. The film ends with a back shot of Hatchiman taking off his mask, revealing long black locks of hair. Coupled with his waify physic, this brings up the question of the character's gender.

While I am not sure how successful this film turned out to be, it never the less established for me that the character is selfish, impatient, ruled by his desires, and also, perhaps gender-ambiguous.


Soon after, I was to begin working on my thesis project at Camera Obsucra School of Arts in Tel-Aviv.

I wanted to discover more about the character, and so I began to write his childhood story, which asked the some of following questions; where and how he was raised, the society and the world that he lived in, his ambitions, struggles and goals. All of these traits were to be portrayed in my fourth and final year film, entitled Shadows Fall. I developed this project intensely over the summer of 2003 with the help and support of my instructors, Tami Bernstein, Amit Shalev and Raz Oved.

The cast of Shadows Fall

By the beginning of the first semester of the last year, I had two small books, each with over one-hundred pages of text, drawings and storyboards that would be used as the building blocks for the film. I also had a 10 minute detailed animatic to accompany these books. My instructors were very excited about my progress and were eager to see what I would produce. Unfortunately, the project seemed like it would be to grand to finish properly over the course of nine months and so I opted to scrap it. I proposed a different project starring Hatchiman, call Shadow Bazaar, but it was met with some hostility. I am not sure if it was simply a backlash to all of the anticipation brought on by the pre-production of Shadows Fall, or if the idea of the new film was inherently lacking (I think it was).

Thus I began work on another story with a different character that somehow led me back to Hatchiman!? This was the story of In the Silence. My thesis film for Camera Obsucra.

In the Silence, 2004, 7 minutes

In this movie Hatchiman began to establish himself as a wanderer, and a character that is only concerned with his own survival. I realized that most of his stories began or ended in the ocean. Even in the current tale that I am trying to tell (The End of Things) he is sailing at sea.

Character designs for In the Silence (2004), including sculptures for both Hatchiman and the Spiker

I left Israel in 2004 and with that I also left Hatchiman behind. Yet recently I have began to wonder about his timeline....

...how do his stories link up together to create an entire lifetime? Has he grown and matured with me over the years?

While The End of Things is not a film that will explore the character's personality, I am finding that it is helping me to discover new things about him, and thus about myself. Hatchiman perhaps, is an alter-ego of mine, a self-critique and a tool to solve (and cope with) my own personal dilemmas.

Recent stylistic designs for Hatchiman (2008)

Image Breakdown

In this post I will try to highlight the different elements that appeal to me in imagery. I will attempt to give examples of these elements within photography and film first. Though I will resort to paintings and animation, should the effect I am looking for be a more manufactured one.
The final goal will be to collate these elements into one cohesive image, which I can then animate.

Ariel Diffusion

Tonino Delli Colli, Once Upon a Time in America, 1984

Notice how the bridge in the background takes on the color of the sky and becomes desaturated.

Character Darker than Background

Andrei Moskvin, Ivan Grozny, 1944

When the background is lighter than the character in the frame, an illusion is created that gives the impression that said character is sinking back, while the environment seems to be popping out.

Contrast

Andrei Moskvin, Ivan Grozny, 1944

The characters alignment (i.e. good/evil) can be read by their grayscale value.

Robert Rodriguez, Sin City, 2005

A heavily manufactured image, but non the less portrays contrast rather nicely. One can see a clear silhouette of the characters, and a rim light separates them from the background. Please note, the inverted outlines on the tile.

Depth of Field
Gregg Toland, The Long Voyage Home, 1940

Note the the image losing detail as it stretches into the distance, the objects in the back blur and fade into the background.

Dynamic Light

Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007

A beautiful clip of the money train robbery from one of my favorite films of 2007, demonstrates how a single moving light brings life to basically, a still environment.

Glow Light

Seamus McGarvey, Atonement, 2007

This glowing light bounces across the image and gives it a dream-like quality.

Hot Spot

Gustave Doré, The Last Judgment, 1897

Gustave Doré’s tends to use specific hot spots to draw focus to certain areas in his images.

Lens Focus

Seamus McGarvey, Atonement, 2007

I like how all of the edges in this image are soft and slightly out of focus, while the center of the subject’s face is sharp and clear.

Level of Detail

Rembrandt, Self Portrait, 1661

In this self portrait by Rembrandt, please note how the details disappear as the eye moves away from the face (the focus of the image).

Levels Separated by Tones

Andrei Moskvin, Ivan Grozny, 1944

In this Image, from one of my favorite looking films, the foreground, mid-ground and background are distinct thanks to the separate tones of lighting. Dark in the foreground, light in the midground and mid-tone in the background. Also note that the lit midground (essentially a hot spot) is framed by the arch-way.

Movement - Anime pose to pose (flow)

Katsuji Morishita, Kill Bill, 2003

There are several aspects that I like regarding the movement in Japanese Animation when it is done well:

• Movement lacks squash and stretch and relies on accurate strong poses. Each pose is held anywhere between two to five frames, depending on how long the animator thinks the pose should display. Usually "cushioning" between one pose to the next. This is a very surgical and accurate process of timing that gives a choppier result than the classic “everything on twos/ones”. But with good posing and correct arcs, it may seem like one is watching a ballet in slow motion, in actual speed.
• The camera is never still, it always moves slightly giving the scene a very dynamic look.
• Fast movments are emphasized with looser drawings and speed lines, while still and "forceful" poses are drawn with greater detail.

Painted Edges

Rembrandt, Self Portrait, 1661

I will use the Rembrandt self-portrait as a demonstration once more if you please.
Note how the edges of the character blend into the background, this is something that I would like to emulate with the edges of my 3d model.
I also quite like the texture of the paint strokes on the canvas.

Radial Focus

Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007

This type of focus blurs and smears the edges while keeping a sharp, clear circle in the center of the image. Using analog methods, the cameraman would tilt the lens of the camera, but in digital it would probably best be done in the post-production process.

Silhouette

Seamus McGarvey, Atonement, 2007

Look at how the different levels of this picture are separated by clear silhouettes. The image of the woman is clear, so is the pier that she is sitting on. And one can practically count the mountains in the distance.

Soft Edges

Arthur Edeson, Casablanca, 1942

One of my all-time favorite actresses, from one of my all-time favorite films. The Soft edges seem to bring out the delicate features of the actress's face.

Texture

Alexander Wilson Hill, Old Pier, Queensferry circa 1920

From National Galleries :
"This photograph, exhibited in Paris in 1926, is typical of Hill's pictorialist work. Pictorialism flourished among amateur photographers in Scotland from the 1890s until the Second World War. Using special coatings, photographers changed the appearance of a print to make it look like a charcoal drawing. The detail in this picture is blurred but this softens the image in such a way that the drabness of the boats sitting in the silt becomes more appealing. By working on the print, Hill intended to 'make an appeal to the emotions quite outwith the scope of straight photography'."

On a personal note, I find it amusing, that representational painting attempted to imitate real-life. Photography then, (arguably a much better solution for capturing a realistic image), tried to copy painting with the pictorialist movement, by "stylizing" the image. And now here I am, attempting a "real-life" image stylization that is copying a painting that is copying actual real life.

Now to make it all move....

Prelude to The End of Things

This Blog has been created to document the progression of the short animation - The End of Things.

The creation of this piece should assist in developing a unique visual style for use in my thesis film at The University of Southern California DADA Division.