A SENIOR FILM CASE STUDY
SWAMP TO SKYLINE
BRIEF
THE
The mission was to create a 30 second to 3 minute narrative film of our choosing. The duration of the project was around 2 and a half months, with production lasting a a month.
This project was designed to be a thesis film, witch showcases the skills and styles we have developed at our time at Ringling College of Art and Design.
FINAL DELIVERABLE ->
RESEARCH
IDEATION AND
Since moving to Florida 5 years ago, Iv'e developed a love hate relationship with alligators with them trying to steal my catches while fishing like my old backyard gator above. I decided to take my love of Florida wildlife and the style of collage into a fun piece for my thesis.
INITIAL
STYLEFRAMES
I wanted my piece to begin in a swamp, but after exploring Myakka State Park close to home, I decided to recreate some of it's natural wetland areas. These areas had far less trees and more grass, witch would save me render time and look more appealing with my chosen style.
I decided to go with a realistic collage aesthetic for my piece, witch some blending and compositing involved to make the elements feel more integrated in the scenes. I was inspired by the piece above, "Nevada Hereford" by artist C.F. Payne for its realism combined with sharp geometric angles.
My final piece focuses on an alligator wanting to escape the swamp to find a new life, however my initial concept focused on an alligator wanting to become more human by exploring the human world through a series of true Florida alligator stories. The first image is based on the incident of an alligator being thrown through a Wendy's drive through. I decided to pivot to a more linear story with a clear motive for the character, witch is the alligator wanting to leave the swamp to find a better life in the city, witch he finds is not for him in the left image. These frames were all done in photoshop with stock images, however the final piece was a combination of designing in After Effects as well for scenes with parallax and complex animation.
TECHNICAL
After EFFECTS, PHOTOSHOP, CInEMA 4D
WORKFLOW
This piece is done entirely in classic 3D in after effects, with the exception of the truck and cop car being modeled and textured in Cinema 4D. A 2.5D approach in this software allowed me to get the flat collage look I wanted by lighting the scenes by hand, and it allowed me to use animated textures and expressions witch I could change on the fly if needed. I used some image finishing techniques for my final renders by integrating grain, and a glow and diffusion filter over the piece to cut down on the cg sharpness of my elements and to give the piece a more cinematic and tactile feel.
Each element of this piece are stock images from Adobe Stock, witch I bring into photoshop or After Effects to break apart into pieces to animate, and to stylize with grain, geometric angles, rim lighting, and color correction to match by backgrounds, style, and lighting as much as possible.
I modeled the cop car and truck in Cinema 4d, witch at first were in a very realistic style. This didn't fit well in my geometric world, so I decided to make them more low poly and texturized for the sake of easy Uv mapping and stylization. To place the vehicles in my scenes I used the adv. 3d renderer in After effects to import my 3d models in to rig them and add expressions to them to animated them faster and to add the gator and glass into them with ease.
LEARNING
This project pushed After Effects to the limit of what it could handle, with some frames taking minutes to render. I learned to bake in textures and backgrounds into mp4's to save render time, and to design in camera so the only elements you see are the ones in the whole scene. If I could redo the project, I would explore ways of a achieving a look similar to this in 3d software to make the workflow and preview viewing much faster. I also brushed up some skills in compositing by focusing on lighting my characters and elements properly.