Influences for Animated Graphic

These are some influences I found and looked at for my animatic i will create in BA8

Pans Labyrinth

For Research of the style I want to capture for my studio work, I decided to watch Pans Labyrinth. Previous to watching the film, I did not know much about the film but I had seen many images of the Fawn character and some other mysterious creatures. It looked like a dark fairy tale to me, and so I thought it would be useful.

The story: Synopsis

Spain, 1944. The end of the Civil War. Recently remarried Carmen moves with her daughter Ofelia into the house of her new husband, coldly authoritarian Vidal, a captain in Franco’s army. Finding her new life hard to bear, the young girl seeks refuge in a mysterious labyrinth she discovers next to the sprawling family house. Pan, the guardian, a magical creature, reveals that she is none other than the long lost princess of magical kingdom. To discover the truth, Ofelia will have to accomplish three dangerous tasks, tasks which nothing has prepared her to face…

Taken form the official Pans Labyrinth website. http://www.panslabyrinth.co.uk/

After watching the film, I realised it was not what I was expecting. Instead of a fairy tale, it focuses more on the trauma of the “real world” and the imaginary world the girl creates in order to escape the horrors around her. I was expecting to get ideas for the style and nature, but instead it inspired my story and ways I can use the theme of children escaping the real world to infuse fantasy into my story.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Another short story I looked at for inspiration was the animation within the film Harry Potter about the Deathly Hallows. This story inspired me because of the way the story was told and the rhythm of the narration worked really well with the animation.

This will be useful for my project when creating the narrative script, when recording the narration, and creating the storyboard. I really like the style of the animation, in my opinion, the 3D shadow puppet style and mood really work well (strong lights clashing with the dark) with the story. The characterture style of the puppets has also given me influence on how I could design my characters and express their movements.

Lord of the Rings Animation - Beginning

Guild Wars 2 Cinematic

The style and cinematics of Guild Wars 2 really influenced me to want to do this project. The style is very lose, and lots of different types of animation are combined to create this one cinematic. But mostly, they focus on using their beautiful artwork for their cinematics instead of creating highly polished 3D renders like many other games do.

This is a video, posted by Arenanet, in it they talk about how they create the cinematics and the process they go through.

In this video, Horia Dociu, Cinematics Lead on Guild Wars 2, reiterates what I like about their style, the way they use the art work and paintings to create a story.
Process:
Work with writers to create a rough storyboard.
Pose the storyboard into a rough animatic to work out timings, transitions and narration. 
The storyboard is then handed over to an illustrator, who adds mood to the image, making sure to keep every element on a separate layer for animation.
(Cinematic Artist, Richard Anderson)
Animators then take these illustrations, adding 3D characters, particle effects and pretty much anything they like to help the story.
The animators focus on bringing any concept art and illustrations the artists do, together and bringing them to life.
Once the cinematic is complete, they then set about adding sounds effects, such as music, background noise and narration.

Taxi

Taxi is a 2D animation created using after effects by Mark Roberts from Sheffield Hallan University- Media of the Arts. I stumbled across this short animation on YouTube and found it to represent the style of after effects animation I was looking for.

After watching this short animation, I decided to have a go at after effects, and see if I could replicate the separate movements of a human body (like making an arm wave). This was not as easy as I first thought, and although I believe I could learn how to do this properly, I felt it would take away my focus on the artwork, which is what I want to be the prominent feature, with after effects as a platform to show it off in a nice way. Therefore it is unlikely that I will use this particular animation style for my animatic, however, I did like how the text was used and the story was clear without the need for a narrator.

Spiderwoman Motion Comic

The credits from Sherlock Holmes