UMBRA: preproduction

As a new task, we got to make a narrative animation. I and Kristina decided to work together again because we know we can make a better quality animation together than alone.

At first, we planned to work on something more experimental, maybe even a bit abstract. We tried to choose a text to start with but in the end, we both agreed we are far from abstract fine art artists to make something like that. We chose a short text from a Tumblr blog, which we found appealing and we both had ideas about visuals to the story. 

Link to the blog here

After that, we brainstormed our ideas, wrote down a rough timeline and everything that is going to happen in the animation.

The name of the animation, Umbra, is related to the shadow character. Umbra means the deepest part of the shadow.

We needed to think about the characters, their personalities, their purpose and all obstacles they are going to overcome. 

Our main character is a teenage girl and she is going to walk through the town at night. Night town can be a dangerous place for a young woman, including catcallers or even rapists. We also thought about simple obstacles on the way such as an unnoticed branch on the pavement, a puddle or a stray dog. 

The second character is a shadow, who looks like the main danger in the animation. The girl can hear someone following her, she is scared of them. She has no idea he is not an enemy but a friend who is saving her from all possible dangers in her way. We do not mean to suggest that creepy men following girls are friends, not rapists or that women are not in danger alone in the night town. It is just a light-hearted story, as I wrote in the treatment. 

We still wanted to keep the traditional style of animation, maybe a bit experimental, with acrylic paint or gouache, so I made two quick acrylic sketches to show our desired colour palette. The main colour palette is blue, which underline the night time aesthetic. The contrasting yellow palette is under a street lamp light which is mainly shown at the end of the video where she recognises him as a friend so the cold colours change into warm, friendly colours.

After making these colour tests we decided to make the animation digital. The main reason for that was the fact, that we want to do digital (2D or 3D) animation in the future and that is why we want to practise it more. Digital animation is definitely more versatile in the industry and commercial use and if we want to do animation as a job after our studies, we should focus on that.

I designed the girl in digital as well. At first, I gave her big white headphones but later I changed it to small earphones.

For the storyboard, I took the first half of it, as Kristina wanted to do the second half. My first sketches were in my sketchbook as something I can use as an inspiration and re-work later, in digital. 

Our full storyboard is drawn in digital and includes mine and Kristina's scenes, some of them are shaded, most of them are only in lineart, black on white or white on black.

The final animatic is exactly 90 seconds. The sound effects are downloaded from a free sounds web page and the music is an original song for the animation by Ali Clinton. Due to technical issues, it is not recorded properly yet, it is just a rough record.

I think the animatic works well, although I am not very happy with my part because it is very rough. I wish I had more time to do all preproduction including some concept art, but unfortunately, I am not that quick drawer so I've done as much as was possible with the time that was given to me.

I hope the animation itself will be good, fluid and appealing. I'm glad we've got one semester to do it and because we are working as a team with Kristina, I think we can do a nice short animated film.

Freesound.org. (2018). Freesound - Freesound. [online] Available at: https://freesound.org/ [Accessed 8 Feb. 2018].

Crypticdatesuggestions.tumblr.com. (2018). Romantic Suggestions From The Void. [online] Available at: https://crypticdatesuggestions.tumblr.com [Accessed 15 Jan. 2018].