Spellbound!

Our initial idea for our third year film was completely different. We starting working on this idea in June/July 2011 and continued to work on it fairly relentlessly until December, at which point we canned the idea! It was a drastic move so late on in the year but it was for a number of very valid reasons, and this post will document the idea and the work that I contributed to the first idea.

 

My role in this film was storyboard artist and animator.

Synopsis

The basic idea behind the story was that there were two wizards living on opposing mountains above a small town, with each character having opposing characteristics. One is tall, very neat and takes pride in everything he does to the point of vanity, with his mountain top reflecting his personality. The other wizard is much less concerned with his appearance and is a grumpy, cynical character which the two wizards completely contrasting in appearance and substance and therefore causes them to clash.

The film was set on a normal day with the sun rising over the vein wizards mountain. He becomes agitated when the 'crude' wizard emerges from his opposing shack and ruins his perfect morning sunrise, and he begins casting spells to show off in front of the crude wizard, creating a giant apple tree. This makes the crude wizard jealous, which causes him to act out and attack the tree by casting another spell. This sparks a feud that gradually escalates to the point of destruction between the two, as they cast spells that become gradually more intense. The feud ends when the wizards have destroyed each others mountain tops and are left with no homes. They choose to settle the argument and assist each other in rebuilding what they had. At the end of this the Vein wizard has rebuilt his house into an even bigger and better version, while the crude wizard has only managed to rebuild the leaky shack he had been previous residing in, so acts out at the vein wizard through jealousy and starts the feud again.

Characters

Vein Wizard

Crude Wizard

The pictures above are of the character models. They were made entire by Ollie and rigged by Greg, and they actually got really far into development before we cut the film. Ollie spent a lot of time developing the look of both characters, and he spent ages changing tiny details that we asked him to try out which we all felt really bad about. But despite the group having input these characters were really products of Ollie's hard work and he did a really quality job on them both. It was a real shame to have to let these characters go.

They were both completely separate rigs, meaning Greg had to tailor his rigs to the dimensions of each characters which is a very common thing to do obviously, but one that we later rectified to speed up proceedings. Greg did a really good job with the rigs and they went through a huge stage of troubleshooting and being sent back and forth between myself, Joe and Greg to change bits that were not working as smoothly as they could have been which is just part of of the rigs' development. But again Greg did such a good job on them so full credit to him.

Storyboarding

I was in charge of story boarding the idea which I thoroughly enjoyed, its a really important process for the film and it's also a lot of fun creating all the shots. I had to keep a lot of things in mind when I began drawing. While I wanted to create some really striking images and atmospheric shots I had to keep in mind the limitations we may face when making the film digitally. Though Ollie and Greg thoroughly assured me that it could all be done and told me not to hold back at all so I didn't!

I took some boards from work so that I could put all the drawings on there to review them as a group. The first board (above) is, I think, the strongest by far. There's some strong establishing shots at the beginning that I think set the scene really well! And it's very rare that I'm complimentary about my own work so that says something. However, I think there's not nearly enough variation in the shots after the crude wizard is established which is something that will come with a number of re-drafts. But the most important thing about the initial boards is that they tell the story clearly which I think they do so for now I have no complaints.

I could say the same things about the second board as well, maybe even more so. Again, there's no way near enough variation which is something to review in future. However there is a nice sequence of shots that I was really excited to work on because there was a lot of potential for some nice effects and animation and it was also a cool little gag to break up the tension. When I showed it to the group they also really liked it which it always nice! More detail is provided below on this sequence.

The last board was probably the one that was going to require the most amount of work and adaptation going from the boards to the animatic. That and there was a huge section missing that I left out because at the time it seemed very straight forward what was going to happen, and we all wanted to rush the process into the animatic stage so I thought we could just leave that section and make it digitally a lot faster. I was of course completely wrong and completely ignorant to the fact that planning is absolutely everything at this stage and there's really not a lot you can afford to skip over.

Looking back on this now and actually seeing the huge blank gap makes me feel like I've learned a lot about the amount of thought that really has to go into every shot and every detail that it takes to produce even two minutes of animated content, and I think the things we all learned from this first project (which was admittedly a completely failure) that we took into our second film that made it go really smoothly. For the most part. Kind of. We'll get to that later.

This picture is just of the storyboard for the entire film laid out in all its glory. This was the product of about a weeks work all together but I tried to churn out as many refined shots as I could every day I worked on it. It's cool to see all the shots laid out in order so that you can visualize the film and review what's already planned. But it's a shame that this film was nearer the 4 minute mark than 2 minutes at the end of things which was far too ambitious.


Sequence

This is the sequence was one that I mentioned earlier in this post. It is a collection of three shots in which the Vein wizard is outraged at the crude's actions and it leads him to release a spell to intense that it blows him back into his own house.

So this (above) is a close up of the vain wizards face to highlight his anger.

A medium shot followed as his wand begins to conjure a spell in anger.

A longer shot then revealed that his spell was to rip all the apples from the tree he had just created and throw them at the crude wizard!

This is then the obligatory reaction shot as the crude wizard is terrified.

He curls up into a ball only to find that all the apples have completely missed him and he remains unharmed!

This shot was eventually meant to be framed a little tighter so that it put more emphasis on his face to show his anger and frustration at completely missing the crude wizard.

This shot was more of a medium shot so that it could incorporate the actions of the vain wizard. In this shot we draws for his wand and begins to cast a spell in a really flamboyant manner, with his wand leaving a trail of spell/mist/dust stuff. I thought that it would be a really nice shot to get some really nice animation in there and also for Greg to go crazy with the effects for the spells, and it was a shot I was actually really looking forward to!

At the end of the previous shot the wizard takes a really strong stance once he is ready to cast his spell. This shot is a long shot of the mountain in profile that would shot the wizard blasting the spell that, while successfully heading towards the crude wizards' house, also blows him back into his own house through the window.

I really liked this sequence! I think it conveys the vein wizards character really well with the flamboyancy of his spell casting and even down to his pent up frustration, which he would understandably keep inside as he is conscious of his appearance and how he is perceived. I just thought the sequence was a solid reflection of the character and the light hearted nature of the film.

Animation

 Below is one of the animation tests I did for a spell cast with the vein wizard. I wanted it to be more mobile than just a flick of the wrist so I had him kind of lunge forward as if he was fencing to make it more of a performance to fit his character. I think that it's the right idea to reflect the characters personality but the animation could be vastly improved. This was only a quick test I didn't spend very long on it, which means I probably shouldn't be so critical of it. It served its purpose so that Greg had a basis to start making some spells and Ollie wanted to do a motion blur render test too, which is video below. I think the motion blur looks great and its a really nice soft render too, not that it will be in any way similar to the final result but it was good to see such an accomplished render at such an early stage.



The video below is more or less the stage the animatic got to before we cut the film. We spent the whole term refining the shots and trying to make sure it read well, but looking back now I'm not even sure it reads like we wanted it to. I mean, it still makes sense to me because I can look past the one or two pose shots and see the intended animation and story, but I think there should be an element of story that comes through in the animatic to let you know you're on the right track in terms of clarity, and this is something that seems to be missing. It's not all doom and gloom though, as we put a lot of work into this film (7/8 months) and I do still think some of the shots would work well, but if I was to do it again, putting aside the main reason we canned it until later in the post, it would have to be a lot cleaner and simpler camera work and be a lot easier to read. I think we really tried to push some of these camera angles away from the more basic ones I drew out in the storyboard, and we must have pushed it to the point of confusion. But, it's a lesson learned. It's also a mistake that we went into the next project remembering and I think it benefited us early on to make the story very clear.



The video below is a spell test that Greg did using my animation. These kind of tests are not only useful for Greg to practise his particle stuff for the spells, but it also helped me to see what the spell looked like, how intensely it would leave the wand and what direction etc. I recognise that these aspects are more or less dictated by the animation, but I think it really hels to see stuff like this so that I could get a more accurate and well-rounded view of the kind of things that would be happening when they cast the spells. It also gave us all a chance to give feedback to Greg and suggest changes. Again full credit to Greg, this is only my animation.



General sketching and shot planning

Despite never actually completing an animated shot for spellbound, I spend a lot of time planning poses and movements for what I believed to be some really tough animation in the film. It was going to involve a lot of fluid movement for spell casting and flamboyancy so I wanted to made sure I was well prepared for the host of emotions and actions we would have to convey to tell the story confidently.