Moon shot

This was a shot that I added in to the short film during the storyboarding process - as it separated Lilith drinking at the end the first flashback and the beginning of the second (we didn't have anything separating the two) We also had no way for the audience to know that the party was being held late at night before seeing the clock at the end. 

Ayesha was supposed to both draw the background and animate this shot but I took it from her to help her work load. 

I didn't have a lot of time to put tonnes of thought in to what I was doing, so I mostly took inspiration from my previous mood boards for the wedding. I mostly tried to look for creepy houses with square windows, because most spooky themed houses have very sharp pointed arched windows - but I needed a big square(ish) one to zoom in to the window. I also needed the building to be quite wide to keep the window in the centre of the screen, but I needed the roof to be thin so you could clearly see the moon and the sky - so these small extra layers on top of the house with small windows really helped give me that space whilst maintaining a normal house structure. 

I started out planning the drawing on my phone in a 1920x3240 canvas. I didn't want this to be too long but I did want to have zoom to zoom out if necessary.

I didn't plan for there to be a floor, pretending there was a little more house beyond the canvas I had originally designed. The reason this changed was the keyframing ended up creating a zoom out in the middle of the pan and emphasised the zooming in to the window. I thought this looked a lot better and so I moved the house's position a little bit and decided to go with that as it looked more dynamic and twisted - like a shot from Nightmare Before Christmas or a playful horror shot with speed. We planned for more fun shots like that in the storyboarding, but to simplify production in the stop motion and to make animation easier, I felt none of our shots were as fun - so I kept the dynamic zoom out and back in. The camera showed the bottom of the house, though, so instead of extending the house, I decided to add a floor - which also made more sense looking back at the original design and its perspective. 

moon shot

WWW- 

• After a few attempts, I think I got the speed just right and ended up with an interesting, quirky zoom.
• The framing ended up quite good, whilst still maintaining a structure that looks like a house 
• I think the colours ended up sticking to the theme in the wedding where the red and blue worked well together - sticking to tinting the browns and greys slightly pink/red. 
• I learnt how to shade using masking, which I usually don't do even for art outside of uni (even though I block shade, I just colour everything in)

EBI-

• I wish I had a little more time to thumbnail test this background a little more instead of going straight for it - because I found that fun with the wedding. 
• It might have looked better with a second light source like a street light at the front - and also a fence or something to add to the bottom exterior.