Painted animation - Research and Tests

From the start I knew that this animation will be for more mature audience.

Starting point for this film were my mums paintings. There was a lot to choose from. When I managed to narrow it down to few I liked the most, the next step was to figure out how they can be connected together in the same film.

First thing I did was to lay them all out and sort them according to colour and overall mood. Thats when idea for the story started to come together.

I wanted for the colour and mood to gradually change as the film goes on, but I wasn't sure yet how. Only after identifying where each painting is based, is it inside, outside, are there people, buildings, streets, is it day or night? I came up with simple visual narrative. It will be more observational film, with people getting by with their every day life. We will see how many things happen in the same time in the same area they live in as we gradually move on. We will have a sneak a peak into their own little universes. There won't be one main character that story will concentrate on, but there will be many different characters that we come across threw the film, all of them as important. As the film starts the day starts and as it ends the day is turning into the night. Working title "When The Sun goes down"

Production Method:

This will be painted animation. Thats because my reference point are original paintings, I would like to try and keep this feeling of their messy texture threw the film. I'm not sure yet if it will be painted on glass with background painting bellow it or if I will paint directly onto the canvas. Glass method seems to be better way to do it as you have more control over only one moving object instead of having characters and background as one. I will use flash to animate and prepare the scenes, so once thats done it's ready to rotoscope and paint.

Animatic

More less what will happen threw the film:

-first we follow guy who walks down the street to neiberhood/building area. 

[sky is yellow]

-[then we move on to orange sky/background] - people on bikes, people walking by, gooses. 

-[then we move to building area, sky is getting darker] - we see more buildings instead of trees and parks, we see people crossing the street, with dogs, prams

-[then we move up the buildings] - to the lady in the window, calling someone or smoking cigaret

-[look into other window] - some people are having a party , you can hear loud music, see people drinking.

-[look to the other window] - someone is watching TV, we see whats on there, some abstract stuff ‘cartoon like’ animation/program 

-[we move out the other window to the outside, when its already getting dark and blue] - from more built area we move on  and see fields, bridges and a lake/sea. Its getting more quiet and peaceful but still life is present - horses eating grass, boats floating creating small waves and sound of water splashing. sun is already gone behind horizon, we can see last glimpses of life before it gets completely dark, with few light flashing in the distance.

For now this semester I did some tests of animation on glass and flash. But I decided that fro now I will put this project to the side and concentrate on my other film.

Animation Test

Reason why I'm not concentrating further on this film at the moment is because of the equipment and studio space I will need for my other stop motion animation. As Painted one doesn't require as much equipment I can work on it later on.