You Are Here: Medium and Layout

Media experimentation

Layout development

Through doing media experimentation I successfully identified a medium that would work best for the hand drawn section of my animation. This was watercolour as it has a ghostly feel about it, much as the past does, which is where the viewer is being taken. However, one annoying thing about using watercolour is it wrinkles the pages if they are too thin. Hopefully, this does not show up on the scans.

Designing the layout of the train station was pretty straightforward. I based it on how the actual station looks presently, with a few minor changes. Mainly, I just simplified the environment, taking away things like pillars and enhancing the colours to give it a more cartoony feel. One thing I did not think about though, was the design of the train tracks. I future, I will make sure I have got every aspect of my design right before I start marking over it in pen and colouring it.

Metamorphosis: Initial Idea (decided concept)

Initial storyboard (left), initial character design and research into concept (right) 

Final character design 

Layout/setting design

Photos are authors own

I decided to work with a slightly obvious idea, which is the metamorphosis of a butterfly, but including the idea of death and afterlife. My initial working story was that a caterpillar awakens from sleeping in the form of a butterfly and is first confused, but the fearful as the shadow of the former caterpillar tells him the he has died and entered the spirit. I left the story as a cliff hanger. However, after attending a critic it was brought up that the story requires the viewer to erase what they already knew about the natural life cycle of a butterfly and it was clear they I needed to include some representation of death into the story. 

Before going on to make a final storyboard I proceeded to create my final character and layout designs. I decided due to time keeping that I would create the animation using grey scale (no colour). However, this seemed to work well with my concept with black representing death and white life. The colour choice will also create a more obscure, eery mood. My final storyboard will therefore be made in black and white, using the polished character and layout design.

Day 4: Type Play

All authors own

Experimenting with fonts and layouts was an interesting process. I was able to be playful with words and strengthen the mean of each word by portraying it in a communicative way. "Busy" is situated amongst repetitions of itself, "thin" uses thin lines and narrow spacing between each letter and "pinched" is situated between two fingers that are pressing together against the P. I would have liked to have used more colour, but I feel it would be most appropriate when using adjectives that are emotions or temperatures. I was surprised to find that so much planning was put into the presentation of words e.g. colour, type face, size, layout and context. I have a new found respect for typography as it's own art form.