Idea #2

Ana Leovy
I came across the artist Ana Leovy, who's striking figures are really bright, beautiful and full of colour. Their features are hard to miss and I love how individual each character she depicts in a painting is so unique.

 


She is a Mexican artist, passionate about diversity through her work. She weaves stories through shapes and colours, inspired by fashion, culture, dreams and everyday life. Her art represents strong, confident characters, living in vibrant worlds. These worlds are often a fusion between real life and her imagination. She plays with the disruption of the human form to reveal her view on internal and external beauty. The bottom painting particularly inspired me as i was struck by how even the trees and the moon were personified. I thought that I could try and create a moon type character on animate who would watch the world below slowly become consumed by technology. This would stretch across two screens. The moon could be on one screen, looking over at the next screen where the word will be falling into chaos. I can contrast the peaceful with the agitated world below it.
I experimented with designing the moon man:

(the quality isn't too great as I had to export each image to copy them- my computer doesn't screenshot)

This is the first design i came out with. I decided to have it white on black as it simply looked more aesthetically pleasing to me. The facial features were very much my own take on Ana Leovy's style; the bold eyebrows, tired eyes, long nose and full lips. Creating this character didn't take long as i was satisfied with this first design. I really liked the delicacy and simplicity of the facial features. I also like how it's not an accurate representation of a person's actual face. It's style, a lot like Leovy's, is an abstract take on the human form. It helps to personify the moon even further as the face suits the rounded shape of the moon's body. The little bumps on the top left were just an experiment i thought looked fitting, so I kept them to add that extra quirk. They could be a little clump of craters on the moon's surface?

I started to think about how i could take my narrative further and I imagined the moon looking down at the Earth. I didn't know what form to make the Earth however. I could either create grass and land at the bottom of the composition and have things happening over it; people driving, walking through the park etc.. Or, I could create an Earth character rather like the moon and have objects popping in and out and around; mobile phones, technology, social media icons etc...

I decided on the later idea and began to design an Earth character on Animate:

This was the first design. I decided to bring in some colour to make the composition more vibrant but I wasn't too sure about the brightness of the green. It seemed too artificial, which was something I wanted to avoid for my design for the Earth. It also didn't seem right without a little face to characterise it. It wasn't very interesting to look at and looked a bit mainstream. Designs like this have been done many times before and I wanted to try and create my own aesthetic. I took another look at my design for the moon man and thought that my moon man looked a lot more like a possible earth man instead. I thought that i could scrap this design for the earth (above), adjust my design for the moon man so he becomes the earth and then create a completely new design for the moon.
Here was the outcome:

I wanted to link the two through colour so I had a strong theme of green and blue; classic earthy colours. I did this so that the audience could tell what characters they were watching without having to obviously explain that this was the earth and moon. I adjusted my choice of green and found a more natural, forest shade. With this design, I properly started to experiment with layers so I could animate the part I wanted in After effects. My idea was to have the moon comforting the crying earth watching her world change (development of technology). I wanted the tears to appear on the face and then stay stationary for the rest of the film so they don't distract from other things happening around them. So, i just made sure to make a separate layer for each tear drop I drew. I immediately felt a lot more confident in this design. It worked a lot better having the moon comforting the earth rather than having the moon looking down at her. The original moon man design also suited the earth a lot better! I thought I'd give both characters some human features like rosy cheeks for the earth and a little night cap for the moon. Again, the design for the moon just came quite naturally and i was happy with the first design. He worked very well in this composition, curled around the Earth. The fact that these two important characters are central allows for the main attention to be on them and for things to happen around them. There's plenty of room for more animations to appear and disappear around them to carry the story further. When i imported these characters into after effects I colour coded each tear blue and ordered them. I then pressed the stopwatch for opacity and had each tear appear one after the other. I tried having them drop down the face but i couldn't get them to move smoothly as they were each on a separate layer, so it looked more effective to have them just appear. Because of this, I felt like there needed to be some other movement happening but i didn't want it to be anything already in the composition. I thought about other elements that the earth has that i haven't yet included. I thought that having a constantly rotating, delicate stratosphere around the earth would be really beautiful. So, i went back into animate and created my own interpretation of a stratosphere and imported the design back into after effects:

As I did this, I came up with a quick possible concept for a sun character (top left), however, he felt out of place and it made the composition look clumsy. Ignoring that little experiment, I really liked my stratosphere around the earth and altered the anchor point in after effects to have it rotate slowly around her. Unintentionally, the wiggly line of the stratosphere made it look as though it was flowing in the atmosphere when it rotated. This made the composition look really beautiful and was the missing element i was looking for. It gave more life to the earth and moon. I was ready to start focusing on other elements of the composition now that I had the main, central design sorted.

The other illustrations I then animated around this composition:

 

I didn't want the earth and the moon to move during the film. I wanted them to stay central and be familiar to the audience. I thought it would look more effective if they were stationary and had elements of the world causing chaos around them. The first piece of technology that came to mind was a mobile phone. Phone's are a blessing in that they allow us to contact those we need to almost immediately and efficiently. However, smartphones hold more advanced technology. We allow our phone to know our exact location and this little piece of technology holds possibly everything anyone would ever need to know about you. It can be seen as an invasive piece of technology. Phones are corrupting people's view on reality. We are so interested about watching other people'es lives on social media, that we forget to enjoy our own. I definitely can see the mobile phone as being a device that my earth character can be sad about. So, i found a generic picture of a phone online (I chose an older phone so that it's recognizable as a mobile to all audiences, as some smartphones look rather alien) and drew up my own Nokia on Animate. I wanted the style and colours to be similar to the earth and moon so I kept that vibrant blue and drew the phone rather freely. I made each illuminated button a different layer so that they will glow at different points to make it seem like someone is typing. I also made a separate layer for the main screen that will flash blue with the words "ringing" over the top. I was really happy with the outcome of this design and didn't have much trouble with it. 

When I transferred it into after effects, it was placed under the earth, so i just highlighted all its layers and moved it to the top left of the earth instead. I wanted it to pop up quite close to the earth and moon and then expand the space later on in the film. I like the idea of a little, compact scene in the centre. I moved each blue button layer along the timeline and staggered them so that each button would flash after one another. I needed to cut each layer however, otherwise the blue didn't go away and the illusion that someone was pressing the buttons wasn't very realistic. I did the same with the blue on the main screen and made it so it flashed after all the buttons had been 'pressed'. This looked really good and I could almost hear the sounds I was going to put over the top. 

The next object I created was a computer as I thought that flowed on nicely from the phone. I was going to have the computer appear over the top of the phone to create a busy atmosphere and make it seem like the earth was really becoming overwhelmed with all this technology. However, this wasn't possible as i had exported each illustration on a black background, so if i put one over the other you could see the black border and i didn't really want to change the scale to get rid of this. I now know how to avoid this for next time but it actually proved a blessing in this instance as i much prefer each object appearing separately rather than bundling on top of each other. I want this animation to be powerful but i still want it to be beautiful and not chaotic to the point where I'm just doing it for the sake of it. This way, you can appreciate each object for what it is and it meant I could focus on the detail of how each object would animate differently. For the computer, It was a bit of an ordeal drawing each key on the keyboard but it was well worth it. I actually made individual layers for each key to flash green however you can't really see it in the final film. I made a layer for the main screen and had it turn on as the button on the right hand side goes green. I then spelled out 'HELP US' across the screen, and this will appear slowly. I decided to write this message because i wanted to boost the story forward and make it clear that this is the earth's cry for help as technology is taking over. But this message is still very ambiguous and could be interpreted however the audience like. I did initially have the sad face as a separate layer but i cut that out in the final edit as i saw no real need for it. Again, I really liked how this design turned out and i managed to keep the same style as the phone. 

I first had this car appear in the same spot as the phone had done after the computer disappeared. I had the body stationary but the wheels were rotating (which is why i illustrated them separately). However, this looked a bit odd and wasn't very thrilling. I felt like i was gobbling up precious time as by this point as was already almost half way through. I thought about how i could change this and brought the car right to the beginning of the composition. It's a car and a car should ideally travel somewhere so i think the problem was that i began with it just stationary next to the earth and it looked a bit lost. Instead, I placed it at the bottom of the composition in after effects, pressed the stopwatch for position and moved it across the bottom of the screen, entering and exiting the frame. I had this occurring as the phone appears and had it carry on to when the computer comes up. This looked so much better, didn't clutter the composition at all, created a more interesting scene and cut the time down. This meant i could have more time for more animations later. I also added another duplicate of the car to follow the first one to create a sense of traffic. Again, keeping with the colour theme. I also made separate layers for each light on the front and back to have them flashing.

I knew that I needed to involve social media in the film at some point as it has a huge impact on the human race. I started by creating a little 'like' icon. I placed it in the composition but I wasn't convinced. It looked too small and out of place. I tried placing several in the composition and changed the scale of each one to make it look like social media was taking over but i just didn't look good and I felt like it was bland compared to the imagination of some of the other imaginations. So i gladly scrapped that illustration and turned to another idea.

I decided it would be a better idea to use the Facebook logo as it's universal and fortunately fits with the colour theme. I first came up with the design (above) spelling 'Fakebook' because I thought this would look effective, but actually i found it quite tacky and almost like i was trying to think about it to hard. My illustrations worked better when I almost wasn't putting any thought into them at all. So I stripped the layers that spelled 'Fakebook' and left it as the logo. I liked this a lot more.

At first, i thought it would be clever to have the Facebook icon pop up on the right of the earth when the computer pops up on the left, so i tried this. I left it like this for a while and got on with the rest of my ideas but when i came back to it i found the logo too distracting from the computer. I wanted people to focus on the words typed onto the screen and not the big white logo on the right. So, I took the logo out and saved it so that i could use it later. I ended up placing the logo after the robots (below) and had it appear several times, covering the screen. This worked a lot better and made technology seem truly invasive as it surrounded the earth and moon.

I went back to my very first idea for a multi-screen composition- the use of robots. I was happy to use robots as an accessory to the main image (earth and moon) in the film but I'm glad i moved away from having robots as my main focus. I achieved the flowy, delicate animation aesthetic I wanted through the simple movement of the earth's stratosphere. I thought i might as well pay homage to the old idea and feature two little quirky robots in my animation. I was just going to make one (above) but unfortunately something went wrong with the layers, so when i exported him into after effects, i couldn't have the red and yellow parts of him flash (which is what i had wanted) as he was all one layer. I didn't mind this however, as i just thought that i could make a second robot and make sure to create enough layers.

So, I created this little guy (above) and made it so that his legs and ears could flash. I was happy that i'd made the mistake with the previous robot as now I had two peas in a pod. I decided to change up the colours in these characters as robots aren't classically blue and green. I wanted them to stand out and seem a little threatening to the earth with their flashes of red. The colours are threatening but i designed this little robot to seem a bit like he's got a few bolts missing. His eyes are wonky and his hair is messy. I wanted to add as much character to each little animation as i possibly could and it was so much fun doing this. The designing of each character was probably the most enjoyable as i was getting more confident with drawing as i went along and the possibility to create absolutely anything was really exciting.

I was just going to end the film with the popping up of the Facebook logo's but i wasn't satisfied that that made the story come to a proper end. Instead, i entertained the idea of zooming into the earth's eye and having it cover the screen. I played around with designs in Animate and came out with this (above). The eye, green cheek and nose are all separate layers. I was just going to have the eye, but after placing it in after effects, it still didn't look right. So, I decided to re-create the left side of the earth's face and made a bigger cheek and bigger nose. I also made a bigger version of the stratosphere to keep that sense of flowing movement until the end. I wanted the eye to flash different colours but again i had issues with the layers and couldn't do that. But, again, I was glad of this mistake because i wanted the end to be calm and the flashing would've distracted from the other intricate elements of animation. I had a very simple animation of a creature grappling around the eye (thinking that this can be a metaphor for technologies' hold on the earth) and the word 'HELP' in the Iris to round the film off from beginning to end. I wasn't sure about this ending at first, as it seemed a bit sudden to zoom into the eye very close-up. However, I dragged it along the time line a little and made some space so it seemed more natural when it appeared. In the end, I was really happy with it and felt like the film needed that bit of change. Now i need to export it and think about sound.

SOUND

 The beeps of the buttons on a mobile phone

For this, I tried to record my own phone beeps through a microphone and onto Audition. However, my microphone was acting up so the sound quality wasn't great and i actually found it a lot easier to get sounds from the YouTube Audio library. I searched their effects and found just what i needed. I had imported the exported film into Premier Pro, so i just dragged the sound file under the timeline for the film and cut it so that each beep was in time with the blue flashes on the phone. I also found an effect for a vibrating phone that i put in for when the screen flashes blue. I did try other, louder ringtones but they were all too short and rather invasive.

Computer typing

I found an effect for fast typing on Audio library. This fitted really well even though the typing moved faster than the letters appearing. It was almost comical. I tried having the type sound for each individual letter but you couldn't really hear it and what you could hear wasn't as good.

Car beeps

I found honking horns and i really liked that the sound effect had different types of horns. Some were loud, some were long and some were quiet and short. it added more of an atmosphere and gave my little cars more of a purpose and a character. It also made it seem like there was a little world outside of my composition.

Facebook logo pop up

I wanted there to be little pops for each logo that appeared and I wanted them to appear faster as time went on to make it seem more intense. Editing the pops to the exact entrance of each logo was a challenge but i managed it and i think it's very simple and effective.

Robots

I couldn't actually find any conventional robot sounds which i found surprising however, what i did find was actually much better. I found a weird robotic lady counting in code which was rather ominous so i placed that in and i found a little scratchy sound to add when the odd little robot comes in after the first robot. I also placed some mechanical scrunching sounds over this to add more depth and really emphasise the appearance of these robots.

Crickets

I placed the peaceful, soothing sound of crickets at the beginning and the end of the film. They are interrupted by sounds of technology and humanity when the phone pops up.

Poem

I don't actually remember what brought on the inspiration for a poem but, after adding all the sounds, I felt like it needed something else and i think a poem is a subtle way to tell a story without making it to obvious. It gives the audience a direction but it's poetic, so it's still open to interpretation. I just watched the film over and over and wrote a poem as I watched. I simply gained inspiration from the images in front of me and decided it to write it as a dialogue between the earth and moon. I only did one draft, changed one or two lines and then just used that. It was just right and fitted with the imagery perfectly. I recorded my voice on audition and had to watch the film as i did this to get the right timing. It's powerful but light at the same time. It was difficult listening to my own voice but the poem was definitely the missing piece. I don't think i was initially going to put the poem in the final film, I just had that burst of inspiration and wrote one. However, it worked to well not to include it.