The Project: Project 1: The XXX

 

The Purpose:

  To portray a dream sequence in a way that conveys the subjective surreality within the dream, despite the sequence being somewhat realworld-possible; to explore the possibilities of animation as a form of moving painting.

The Dream:

  I awoke to a pale world inside of a subway tunnel. As I followed the path, i found myself led into a large concrete corridor - an underground mall where all of the stores were like sideshow attractions. A flickering pink neon sign in the distance caught my eye; I cautiously approached. Inside the concrete room, girls were chained to the walls. In the center, a ringmaster was barking... "Step right in,"and he burst into laughter.

The Process:

  I first started in trying to find a suitable way to render the ringmaster character; as my memory was more specific on the emotions than the visual elements, I knew that he gave the distinct impression of being sleazy. I found a reference photo and began work on drawing and coloring him in Photoshop - adding elements that would contribute to his overall creepiness and sleaziness.  I used multiple layers to color with different intensities and have various colors shining through in different areas. c
 

Next, I went to work on creating the background.  I used a photo of concrete for texture and then used a black color burn tool with a small opacity in order to add shadows to the wall.

I then added in the girl, much the same way as I did the ringmaster.

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The last thing for me to do before animating was to create the neon lettering.  For this, I used a bright pink brush tool and wrote the letters.  I then made the brush size slightly smaller and changed the pink to almost white and drew inside of the existing letters, making the bright pink outline that neon signs typically have.  I then put the brush to a larger size and bright pink and changed to color dodge setting and added highlights to the background and

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the side of the ringmasters face to give the impression of emitting light. I made frames of each step along the way to make sure I could flicker the light in the animation process.

I then went to work animating.  I had to break apart the jaw and the head to manipulate them (I also had to extend the neck and the blackness behind the jaw so that the movements would not reveal background beneath).  After making these into new layers, I also, had to make the eyes new layers so that they could move.  I made a preliminary sweep, creating frames of each mouth and eye movement.  I then went into each frame and merged the layers so that I could tilt and move the head, as well as move the body.

Similarly, I went back in and moved the girl slightly.

Once I assembled these frames (well over 100), I realized that the girl’s movement was distracting, so I removed these frames – I also limited much of the ringmaster’s movement to keep him from vibrating too much.  After assembling the 50 or so usable frames in final cut in a natural way, I cycled this over and over, splicing in portions where the neon light would flicker.

I then began assembling the right sounds for the clip.  Warehouse atmospherics, neon hum, neon flickering, as well as some almost imperceptible bass tones.  Then I began recording the ringmaster’s voice.  Unable to remember the specifics of the laugh from the dream, I had some friends perform sleazy laughs for me, and we developed something very close.  I recorded it in Garageband.  To match the soundscape, I added some reverb and delay to the voice.  I then cut the laugh up into each sound and aligned it with the already animated voice.  I then exported the audio and brought it back into final cut, and the animated painting was finished.