Ophelia: Love & Privacy_Settings (2013)
My Graduation film of the Animation course at the Filmakademie Ludwigsburg, a romantic-comedy about the "End of Privacy".
Hubert, the lovely wannabe-casanova protagonist of this story has a bubble floating over his head (like in comics), and in this bubble all his thoughts are visible. So everybody can read his thoughts, and since he mostly thinks about (naked) ladies, this gets him into big trouble…
(see the film's website on loveandprivacysettings.de)
1. For this project I was responsible for direction, art direction, character and environment design, modeling/rigging/texturing, script-writing, render and comp, and parts of animation. You know the whole bwou-ha.
Watch the full film on CartoonBrew:
2. Visual Identity
The idea behind the visual style of the film was to find a unique look that was
a. simple
b. graphic like an old 3D-computer game
c. portuguese
d. more focused on narrative features than visual detail
a. Simple:
Cartoons are simplified. 'Nuff said.
b. graphic like an old 3D-computer game
Ophelia is a computer animated film and I wanted to honor this. Instead of opting for i.e. a painterly or realistic style, I wanted to use a clear, low-polygon visual look that cherishes the tools that were used.
c. portuguese
Portugal is beautiful, so I decided to locate the story in a portuguese-ish environment. There's a peculiar mix of traditional architecture, gorgeous mosaic patterns, strong graphic design in public signs and a very lively street art scene, and all this in a refreshing vacation-y atmosphere. It's not really accurate in my film, but I tried to infuse a bit of this into the look.
d. more focused on narrative features than visual detail
My film has a lot of characters and locations in its story, so I needed to also make sure the production workload would be manageable. The simplified style helps with that. For this film, it was, for example, less important to have detailed textures on a character's hair, but to have the hair move in the coastal wind, so that the atmosphere and feeling of a shot would be visible.
Characters go through a development process during the film, and this is expressed in their clothes and hair styles changing. A higly detailed look would have made aspects like these very unfeasible.
3. Character Design
One Eye: The idea to have only one eye, was just for fun... it worked and we went for it !
The characters are mostly very simply modeled in Maya with a low polygon-count, and this worked well for everything except the faces! Having blocky eye(s) and mouths made them not very appealing or cute.
So, with the help of Master Rigger Tom Ferstl we devised a facial rig that wrapped smooth, beautifully shaped NURBS Surfaces as Eye and Mouth onto the heads. This way, I could have my blocky characters and round graphic mouth shapes at the same time! Yeah TECHNOLOGY!! (Here's little demonstration video)
(The seagull is the only character in the film with two eyes... crazy bastard!)
4. Evolution of the Background "Praca de Commercio"
I hope you liked this short insight into the design process of Ophelia, and the related decisions the were taken. Onto the next project!
...
vacation :)
------
Directed by Bin-Han To aka Biniman
Produced by Heiko Schulze
Music by Marcel Walter
Animation by
Jacob Frey, Ringo Klapschinsky, Alexander Dietrich, Nick Saradopoulos, Jessica Tegethoff, Kim Nguyen
Sounddesign/Pre-Mix by Dennis Kopacz
Re-Recording Engineer Christian Heck
Sound Engineer Lena Zagikyan
Female Voices Alexandra Mayr
Additional Modeling by Anja Verena Wacker
Additional BG design by Kathrin Schneider
Vocals by Siggy Has Ardeur
Band BigBand MHS Mannheim , directed by Joerg Reiter
Tuba by Lorenz Bamler
Hubert, the lovely wannabe-casanova protagonist of this story has a bubble floating over his head (like in comics), and in this bubble all his thoughts are visible. So everybody can read his thoughts, and since he mostly thinks about (naked) ladies, this gets him into big trouble…
(see the film's website on loveandprivacysettings.de)
1. For this project I was responsible for direction, art direction, character and environment design, modeling/rigging/texturing, script-writing, render and comp, and parts of animation. You know the whole bwou-ha.
Watch the full film on CartoonBrew:
2. Visual Identity
The idea behind the visual style of the film was to find a unique look that was
a. simple
b. graphic like an old 3D-computer game
c. portuguese
d. more focused on narrative features than visual detail
a. Simple:
Cartoons are simplified. 'Nuff said.
"By stripping down an image to essential 'meaning,' an artist can amplify that meaning...
Cartooning is not just a way of drawing, it's a way of seeing."
— Scott McCloud
b. graphic like an old 3D-computer game
Ophelia is a computer animated film and I wanted to honor this. Instead of opting for i.e. a painterly or realistic style, I wanted to use a clear, low-polygon visual look that cherishes the tools that were used.
c. portuguese
Portugal is beautiful, so I decided to locate the story in a portuguese-ish environment. There's a peculiar mix of traditional architecture, gorgeous mosaic patterns, strong graphic design in public signs and a very lively street art scene, and all this in a refreshing vacation-y atmosphere. It's not really accurate in my film, but I tried to infuse a bit of this into the look.
d. more focused on narrative features than visual detail
My film has a lot of characters and locations in its story, so I needed to also make sure the production workload would be manageable. The simplified style helps with that. For this film, it was, for example, less important to have detailed textures on a character's hair, but to have the hair move in the coastal wind, so that the atmosphere and feeling of a shot would be visible.
Characters go through a development process during the film, and this is expressed in their clothes and hair styles changing. A higly detailed look would have made aspects like these very unfeasible.
3. Character Design
One Eye: The idea to have only one eye, was just for fun... it worked and we went for it !
The characters are mostly very simply modeled in Maya with a low polygon-count, and this worked well for everything except the faces! Having blocky eye(s) and mouths made them not very appealing or cute.
So, with the help of Master Rigger Tom Ferstl we devised a facial rig that wrapped smooth, beautifully shaped NURBS Surfaces as Eye and Mouth onto the heads. This way, I could have my blocky characters and round graphic mouth shapes at the same time! Yeah TECHNOLOGY!! (Here's little demonstration video)
(The seagull is the only character in the film with two eyes... crazy bastard!)
4. Evolution of the Background "Praca de Commercio"
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I hope you liked this short insight into the design process of Ophelia, and the related decisions the were taken. Onto the next project!
...
vacation :)
------
Directed by Bin-Han To aka Biniman
Produced by Heiko Schulze
Music by Marcel Walter
Animation by
Jacob Frey, Ringo Klapschinsky, Alexander Dietrich, Nick Saradopoulos, Jessica Tegethoff, Kim Nguyen
Sounddesign/Pre-Mix by Dennis Kopacz
Re-Recording Engineer Christian Heck
Sound Engineer Lena Zagikyan
Female Voices Alexandra Mayr
Additional Modeling by Anja Verena Wacker
Additional BG design by Kathrin Schneider
Vocals by Siggy Has Ardeur
Band BigBand MHS Mannheim , directed by Joerg Reiter
Tuba by Lorenz Bamler
