A few years back I did some animation work on a short film. The film was live action but there was going to be an animated flash back scene. The work in this post is a bunch of proof of concept work I did showcasing quickly an idea of how I envisioned some of the shots.
There was a lot of Native American imagery and ideas. Things having a sort of dreamy feeling about them. There was a bit of a rush on this work as is the case a lot of time with projects, but this one was extreme, in that the director wanted to see something over the weekend. So I produced all this in a matter of around three intense days from concept to execution.
I was sort of a good fit for this project because they didn't have the time or budget for full animation and because of past projects I had a lot of experience with an animation of still images style, which can still look cool and be very narrative, but take a fraction of the time to full on character animation.
The basic idea here is you have to find creative ways to tell the story that don't require much character movement. So your main tools are composition and camera movement, along with special effects like the rain above. Then little touches of frame by frame animation can go a long way.
Below you can see what they above animation looks like laid out in Photoshop.
This was a pretty fun and challenging project because of the time table. The movie ended up not happening so this was all I did for it, and wasn't able to work on it anymore. Makes for a nice Hive post though! :D Hope you all like, see you in the next post.
As far as minimalistic use of the medium to conveying emotion goes... you nailed it.
It's like the opening sequence of Spiderman 2, from 2002. You could watch that alone and know what the previous movie was about more or less. It helped that Alex Ross did the artwork.
Awesome work!!!
Yea, I was a big fan of this medium. An in between between a comic and full animation. Thanks!
Very impressive. Well done!
Thanks @xfx! 😊
Jeez you did well. The only 2d anim I was able to pull off in that kind of timeframe was a stupid Flash one that involved stick figures XD
Would you be posting this as a new thing now instead of as a showcase if the movie had gone ahead? I'm not sure how the timing of these things works, all I know is I've seen some other friends occasionally posting things that they've done for companies and they can "finally" show everyone what they've been working on :)
Thanks @ryivhnn! This is actually pretty old and I've posted it before a long time ago, that's why it's a showcase post. I've got a bunch of posts that flew under the radar when I first posted them and that's why I encourage peeps to repost their really old stuff if they've been here a long time. Chances are 90% of the people who see it will be seeing it for the first time.
Woah... this is amazing (as always, of course ) ❤️! It went very quickly from a sense of eerie, to tragedy and heartbreak. It nearly brought a manly tear to my eye. Cheers and I'd love to see more of these animations :-)
Thanks @zacknorman97 :) Hope to be able to do more stuff like this in the future.
Never stop! I'd be sad when the day comes that I don't see some Midlet artwork in my feed :-(
So nice.. You did a great job with die and rain.
Thanks @patschwork! 😊
I've been experimenting with animation lately. So much work, but I really like doing it.
Right now with 3speak's short form community, I've been considering the opportunity and potential in creating animated shorts. Might take a week to do a solid minute but hey! Maybe it's worth it.
It is, I've spent more than a week on just one characters run cycle and didn't regret it when it was all done. It's super satisfying. Looking forward to what you come up with.
Hey man, I’ve been doing a lot of short (60 seconds) music videos with animation and stuff. I post on 3speak but I wasn’t aware of their short form community, how do i find it?
3speak announced it on their blog recently.
Cool ill check it out, thanks.
I think the post is still on the trending page, as of this writing.
posh
How fun, I love your animated Native American chief. I'm surprised I wasn't following you yet. Must've missed you somehow. Do you have other animation projects I can check out? I'm a fellow filmmaker, video producer, and animator too—pretty new at the animation part although it's my fave.
Oh, This looks soooo GOOD!!! I especially like that grainy texture you use on the animation to give it an xtra flavour.
i particularly love your Indian. Nicely done!
Totally love it! ❤️
incredible post My sister really likes your post
Thanks @hardiananisam! :)
Yes