ct5anip production diary

7/25/2019 CT5ANIP Production Diary

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CT5ANIGP: Production Diary

Lutey & The Mermaid



First PresentationFor my short film pitch, I chose to look at an Algonquin myth about an evil spirit called theWendigo.

The spirit would possess people that resortedto cannibalism and turn them into a monster !! also called a Wendigo.

The short's plot would have been a pair ofcharacters on a rescue mission. They wouldfollow their GPS to find a destroyed campsite,

whilst looking around to see where everyonedisappeared to there'd be clear signs of somesort of attack. The Wendigo would then revealitself, kill one and attempt to catch the other.

I think I left the story idea too open ended, itfeels more like an opening than complete film

in and of itself. Also, I probably could haveexplained the story better when presenting asI rushed through it. I also should haveincluded more information about previousinterpretations of the Wendigo as I di look atthem, but did not include them in thepresentation.

I'm still happy with my visual research andconcept art I produced for the pitch, though.



I joined the group focusing on a Finnish myth called 'Luteyand the Mermaid'. It's about a lonely fisherman, Lutey, his

dog Tripp and a mermaid who tries to lure him out to sea. Atfirst, she's beautiful and in need of help but as she whipsersinto Lutey's ears of wonders he grows more distracted. Only Tripp's barking snaps him from the trance and he sees ahideous monster instead of the beautiful mermaid. He praysas she's about to drown him and only that lets him go. Luteyreturns home, happy and content with his life.

After the group met for the first time we went away and doneour own sketches for ideas for the monster the mermaidturns into and for his dog, Tripp. I looked at the BlackScabbard fish for inspiration with the monster. For Tripp, Ilooked into Nordic dog breeds and found the Lundehund.

" As the work progressed, we changed the story slightly to

work better. #

Lutey & The Mermaid



[something about the script & the storyboarding here]

After getting into our group, the first thing we begun working on was the script. Beth had alreadypresented the story in it’s full based entirely on the myth. We all knew the basic story so we worked from

that. We sat together and typed up and edited the script as we went as a team. It was a good way of gettingus all on the same page and solidifying the story so it would be clear as a film. Originally we wrote indialogue although we were planning from the beginning to go with out.

After working out the script, we all went away to drew storyboards. The aim was for everyone to drawcomplete board of the entire short. This was so we’d see how everyone was visualising the film. I did notmanage to finish my board, only getting about halfway through the film. I probably could have finished ifI’d organised my time a bit better or simplified the board’s drawings a bit more.



MY STORYBOARD



StoryboardWe all met up with out finished boards. From there, we went through everyone’s looking for similarities andthe shots everyone preferred. We assembled our first complete board from everyone’s cutting and pastingtogether shots and sections we liked to make our first complete board.

In the final film we ended up cutting out the opening sequence in his house completely and changing aroundthe ending to make it mores suitable for the film.



In the original legend Lutey prayed and through that prayer the mermaid simply let go of him. While that is what we boarded in, in the end we decided that didn’t work or read very well and was unsatisfying.

In the final version the film begins with Tripp accidentally biting Lutey’s arm. While he’s struggling to breakfree, he remembers the bite and bites the mermaid. This frees him from the mermaids grip and makes Lutey’sreasons for surviving more concrete with Tripp was rather than some mystical mumbo jumbo that would be

anti!climatic.



Character Designs After finish our first draft of the storyboard wemoved to character designs. Beth divided up thecharacters for one person per each character.

I worked on the design for the ‘good’ mermaid at the very beginning.

She had to be pretty, innocent and we decided tomake sure the colours were warm and the polar

opposite of the ‘evil’ mermaid design.

I began with a mood board. I looked at a mixture ofillustrations and photographs.

For her appearance I chose a couple of celebrities tolook at as a starting point for her facial features andhair. " Audrey Hepburn, Lana del Rey & Portia Doubleday. #

I also based her tail heavily on the male Samuraifighting fish. They’ve got beautiful, flown tails which Ithought would suit the character and ramp up the very pretty aspect which is supposed to help lureLutey in.



Mood board

I i i l k h l i f i l f



Initial sketches exploring facial features.



I collected images with colours I wanted touse for her design. I collectedthem together and pixellated them inPhotoshop to help with picking colours. To the right are two ideas for

possible colours and patterns for her tail.



A turn around and colour swatchesof my first ‘final’ design.



After showing the designs it was agreed the mermaid’sproportion were too ‘Disney !esque’ and didn’t match

the designs for Lutey and Tripp. To the right arefurther shape explorations for the mermaid’sproportions.

In the end we decided on larger hips $ a more pearshaped body $ than the Disney type of small waistsand tiny hips " or tail, in this case #.



This is my final design for the‘Good’ mermaid. I simplifiedthe tail patterns a lot so they’dbe more suitable for the finalfilm.

Final Designs

F l D



Sara’s final turnaround for Lutey.

Final Designs

F l D



Franklin’s final Tripp design.

Final Designs

F l D



Jed’s final design for the ‘Evil’ mermaid.

Final Designs

B k d



We ended up putting settling on and designing a final look for the backgrounds aside. Although as the deadline got closer and finishing all of the clean up looked less likely, it doesn’t seem like we would have managed tofinish the backgrounds completely anyway.

I produced this one painting playing with colours " which did not go well # and texture ideas particularly paying

attention to the sea and water.

Backgrounds



A mood board I made looking for inspiration and styles to paint for the film’s backgrounds.

A i ti



AnimaticWe divided sections for the animatic between us and we drew sections of the animatic. This is one of thebackgrounds I drew for my section of the animatic. The full video is a separate file/below on the blog.



Before we begun thumbnailing Beth divided the filminto individual scenes andthen delegated scenes.

This will eventually be thescenes we will animate forthe final film.

Th b il



ThumbnailsHere are some of the thumbnails for mysection. I put them together in a video as thefirst draft go my scenes before moving onto

keyframes.

As I felt a lot of the thumbnail drawings werequite strong I used them for my keyframes. Itraced over them in Photoshop and then beguninbetweening.

A i ti



Animating I did all of my animation in Photoshop as I preferdrawing in the program over flash. The extra choices andcontrol over opacity, layers and brushes made the workflow a lot easier and more comfortable for me.

I went through most of my scenes at least twice beforesettling on one I liked. The top left was my first attempthowever I was unhappy with the timing and also felt it was ridiculously off model. Also, I did not think theemotion read as well as it should have.

I went through this with every single scene although did

not save all of the earlier versions however a lot of thembegan o%!model till i got the hang of drawing Lutey. Thesecond image is the final sketch version of this shot.

After finishing all of my animations I needed to movethem over to Flash for the final clean up. As everyone else was doing their animation in Flash I needed the final

linear to match. Although I much preferred animating in photoshop, it would have been a more streamlined workflow and matcheveryone’s else better if I stuck to flash the entire time.

I felt like the drawings lost a lot when I cleaned them upin Flash. If I worked in the program for longer I probably would have gotten a better hang of the drawing tools and

been happier with the final product.



This is a still from the finished film. In the end we had not planned enough time to move past clean up intocolouring the film. We did not leave enough time to colour or to produce the backgrounds. Although I am fairlyhappy with the quality of animation I do think more planning and sticking to the plan would’ve meant we’d finishedthe film. However, given the time constraints I think we did produce a decent film that was very close to Beth’s

original idea.

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