Saturday 12 January 2013

Influences

Here I've collected some of my main influences for this project all of which I really love and text is taken from my interim report on reference materials and pre-production work:


'Robes of War' (2008), is an emotive depiction of the devastating effects of war on a woman. The serious topic and use of metamorphosis and symbolism are aspects I want to include in my film. Although the style is more abstract than my intended film, I am keen to portray the traffickers in similar smeary, fluid way to show how they manipulate and escape people and the law. There is no dialogue or foleys in the film, just dramatic music to convey the pace and emotion and I think this works really effectively. The music here is my main reason for this influence as my film will have no (or extremely little) dialogue and dramatic music, although I am also hoping to include foleys.



ROBES OF WAR from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.



I decided to utilise material textures for my film to echo the themes of consumerism, for example using food or clothing textures. My main reference example is 'The Thomas Beale Cipher' (2010) which uses an interesting 2D paper-like effect technique. Particularly I like the way the textures move subtly within the character – the character moves over the top of the texture rather than ‘with’ it, so there is constantly something moving within the frame. I am going to employ this technique in my piece. Although lots of different textures are used the colour palette is consistent and seems mysterious which ties all the scenes together well. I also like the fluid animation style which was done using rotoscoping. I would like to get a similar fluid motion in my film but I think I will use video footage to reference rather than complete rotoscoping.




The Thomas Beale Cipher from Andrew S Allen on Vimeo.


'The Dog who was a Cat Inside' (2002) is a story about a dog who has an uncooperative cat 'living' inside him and it relates how they deal with each other through gentle humour. It can be interpreted as relating to friendships and even self-worth and I think it deals with these sensitive issues cleverly and sympathetically. Here the characters are truly flat 2D, so much so that when the turn to the side they 'disappear'. The backgrounds are also highly stylised and created as 2D boxes in a 3D space. Interesting camera angles show these off well and this is something I may utilise in my film. 



The Dog Who Was A Cat Inside from Trunk Animation on Vimeo.


Pixar's 'Day and Night' (2010) has an interesting technique, where the story is told within the two textures of the two main characters; so the characters are the background as well as themselves. The character texture changes depending on the mini-story being told and the characters move over the top of their individual texture. 2D is used for the character outlines and the inside scenes have been rendered in 3D. Although initially I found the concept a bit confusing because it's so unusual, it is very effective at getting across the different emotions of the characters, especially when matched so well to the backgrounds.




Day & Night by Pixar 2010 from Tapua on Vimeo.

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