Adding backgrounds

6/11/20

We had previous discussions as a group where I first designed this idea for the living room during a group call. 

I designed it like this mostly because I decided for work flow to have the opening shot done with, so the kitchen table was mostly based off of how it looked in the story board. In the final, this was changed to stool seating without backs so that all of the characters could fit in a tighter frame like people wanted. I think the main thing we wanted Ayesha to keep was the photographs on the walls. 

26/12/20

Ayesha's Concept art

In the end, we had a group discussion about adding a chair arm next to the sofa so that Sandy could walk behind it to hide the walk cycle legs as she came in shot to scream "that was my diary!"

Me and Ayesha also had a creative talk about adding a doorway to the concept art - as it won't be visible in any shot but makes sense in the context of a house. But the wall pan shot had already been finished and the wall obstructs the pan but luckily in the context of the shots in the movie - no person watching would know.

She also ended up using the striped wallpaper I made for the main intro shot - but the alternative zoomed out version to maintain clean linework. 

Today I discussed workload with Ayesha because she has just over a week to go and has four final backgrounds, her sketch layer, and the art book to do. So today I told her I would take two of the backgrounds off her hands which are the dance shot and the bottle throw shot. These were easy for me to copy in her style as I could just draw over this concept art but in Harmony. And they don't need shading because of the flashing lights and dark lighting over layers I'm adding to the final scenes. 

Today I got the dance shot background done. 

WWW - It was consistent to Ayesha's style, looked good colour wise and the talk we had about making the couch dark grey to match the colour scheme but still look lighter than the shadow characters really worked.  [Note: It looked good in every colour variant of the flashing lights in the end too. ]

EBI - The perspective on the wooden floor panels was off and that was harder for me to calculate in Harmony but I think the vignette lighting helped to hide it.

(I added shading to Lilith in the bottle throw shot today as well)

Placing the little creature worked out in the end, as his head shaped stayed consistent with the perspective and he stayed in frame whilst jumping. I also got to add the cool bend on the couch cushions to make one of our backgrounds a little more interactive, which was fun to do. I think this shot has good rule of thirds, especially when the lighting effects were added afterwards, as the dark vignette helped to highlight Lilith the most without making anyone completely central or on a straight line. 

 

27/12/20

Today I added the background to the throwing shot. This was luckily mostly a copy and paste job but I spent a lot of time trying to get it in to the right position - changing the line weight slightly to match the more zoomed in position - and changing out the striped wallpaper for the zoomed in alternate I had made so the linework didn't blur. I also had to make sure there were the same amount of stripes in the shot and they were the same distance. I'm glad I noticed the detail. 

EBI - I think that the main issue we had with both of these shots was that even though both had the same bumpy line weight and texture as the rest of the backgrounds- because they were done in Harmony, it's not as visible in the final render as the pixels merge together a little bit. But as the creative director and lead animator - I thought it wasn't so noticeable in the final shot behind the vignette and the line size consistency is more worth the risk.