The Original Human – Documentation
This is a brief documentation for the process of the Reflection on Reality project.
Earlier in May this year, we got to pitch a keyword to the MA Writing students from Central Saint Martins and the word I pitched was “Divine”. The writer Xiaoyao Zhang was paired with me next and this was the script I was provided after:
The Chosen One
（Keyword: Divine）
I always know that, I’m special. You know, with this red birthmark on my face. That’s the only color in this world.
Day after day, I repeat the work I was assigned to do. Collect trash, and classify them ( All trash comes from above). But I believe, my day will come.
And finally, it is. (Picks up a note.) “The original human”. I don’t know what that means, but I keep it. After that, I get more and more pieces.
“Do you believe that witches exist?”
“A beach with no waves.”
“What’s the truth？”
The last piece says, the destined one returns to the ocean in red.
I’m the chosen one. And now I know, return to the ocean. That’s my fate.
(Far, far up high, in the upper world, everything is in color. A normal human is tearing pages out of a fairy tale book, folding them into various shapes and throwing them down. We can see the name of the book: “The Daughter of the Sea”.)
After the approval of the script, the voiceover was recorded by MA Writing student Felix Berendse:
In October, the pre-production part of the animation began. While I felt like I’d hit a few obstacles trying to interpret the script in my own way, eventually, I came to a point where I could see myself taking the concept further. At this point, my film was going to be called The Parasite. And this was the first pitch I’d put together:
The animatic came soon after and this is where I got to first put down my ideas of how I wanted the story to progress
With feedback and guidance, eventually, the film started to take shape and the title of the film had shifter from The Parasite to The Original Human. At this point we were given the opportunity to pitch an idea for a soundtrack to the student of Guildhall School of Music and Drama and this was the pitch I’d prepared hoping that someone would understand where I was going with this:
Before proceeding with the production of the film, I’d put together a little personal schedule so I could finish all the work on time:
Moving into production, the next step was the Rough Animation:
A this point I had a more solid understanding of exactly where my film was going and I’d also received a music sample by Sam Moss that I connected with almost immediately. Things were looking up. The next few weeks were spent cleaning up the film and getting through the shots one by one.
Here is a sample of a shot breakdown (of the title card)
The final film with the music was completed on Final Cut Pro. The softwares used for the animation were TVPaint, Procreate, and Procreate dreams.
These are some more stills from the final film:
Piecing the Puzzle together
continued from the previous article
Lastly, another role in animation that I’d like to work in is as an editor. While the artists, animators, voice acting and sound teams work hard to tell the stories in shots and sequences, there’s something very fulfilling in putting everything together and guiding the narrative to form the bigger picture. Whereas writing for animation is more vast and limitless, editing for animation is a far more precise task than it would be for live action as there arent usually multiple takes of the same shot.
Working as an editor for an animation project is a busy task from the get-go. The editor guides the pre-production and production teams so as to not waste any footage or labour and to make sure that the story is going the right way. Almost like a producer. They get to oversee the music and sound as well. As someone with fairly adequate experience working with sound and enjoying the process, the combination of working with both animation and sound is something I’m very much drawn to.
As summarised by editor Edie Ichioka, “In animation, the editor is creating and recreating a blueprint to align with the director’s vision. It starts with storyboards and scratch dialogue, and moves on to previsualization, layout, final dialogue, animation, music, lighting, composite shots, score, and the final mix and grading. Each step informs the next and often loops back for revision.”
While being an artist and animator is something I love to do, being a storyteller is also something I enjoy just as much if not more, for the reason I got into animation was so I could tell my stories using this medium. Being an editor would give me many chances to guide the storytelling process.
All this being said, if I were to go with my heart and tell what I wanted to be fifteen years from now, I would say “Art Director” with no hesitation at all, but I think the animation industry has a lot to offer me before I can establish myself as one. And I’m looking forward to it!
Cleaning Up
continued from the previous article
As we move on to the production roles of animation, we start to enter waters that have always had me on guard. Especially when it comes to being a clean-up artist. I think the amount of skill and passion it takes to be a 2D clean-up artist is quite incredible and from all the experience I’ve heard about from professionals in the industry who have taken the time to visit Central Saint Martins to talk to us about the clean-up process, it seems that I would be right with the assumption.
It takes a lot of discipline to ground oneself and draw characters designed and animated by other people and contribute such a significant part to the finished look of the animation. I’d never before this term gotten the opportunity to clean up anything properly. Just one animation I did in my undergrad but back then I wasn’t really aware of how to do it precisely. This November I cleaned up my animated short for the Reflections of Reality project and I got better acquainted with inbetweening.
Like writing for animation, but on a much bigger and more precise scale, the creative mind and understanding of 3D form are essential to the role of a clean-up artist. Now that the roles of a breakdown artist, an inbetweener, and a clean-up artist almost entirely fall upon the clean-up artist, knowledge of the structure and timing of animation are just as important as the structure and timing of oneself with their craft.
One animated film I’ve really looked up to with the clean-up, colouring, and lighting process is Klaus (2019). The various behind the scene shots we have gotten from the animators right from the character design to the process of lighting up the film have been very interesting to explore and almost five years later, I still continue to find things about the clean-up process in that movie that makes me want to explore the field more. Here’s an example of a shot breakdown from Klaus.
Working on my film this month made me realise that with a little more time and a little more guidance, clean-up is something I would really enjoy exploring in the future. Also this quote from clean-up artist Todd Jacobsen,1
“The little fire inside me that I felt while I was working on the film gets stoked once again, and it makes me walk a little taller knowing that I was an element of a moment in time that can’t be explained so easily.”
continue to the next article
Writing for Animation
Earlier in March this year, I’d written a blog entry1 about my journey as an animator till then because I’d misunderstood an assignment. However, looking back at it now in November with the experience I’ve gained since then is pretty interesting.
Since March, I have worked on two full-fledged animation projects. The London International Animation Festival Sting and the Term 3 short film in collaboration with the Writing students. During this time, I’ve come to realise that I’m not scared to be an animator. I’ve been scared of the lack of resources and guidance. I’ve been enjoying working on all different parts of the animation process from the pre-production to the production to post-production. Though I still heavily lean towards pre-production and visual development, I’d like to explore three different roles within the industry that I’d like to try out in the future. Starting with being a writer.
Being a writer for animation I think requires a certain level of creativity and understanding of the medium. While I’ve daddled a little in it over the years, I wanted to understand what exactly it would be like professionally. I’ve only ever had to guide myself with the instructions on a script, but what does it take to guide a team? To get a group of creatives to be on the same page as you with no visuals to provide. In an interview with Lisa Granshaw, writer Jennifer Muro says, “Thinking visually, I think is a huge thing in animation. It’s so funny, writing live-action samples and stuff like that now, I think very visually when it comes to how I write my lines because you could do so much more sometimes that you couldn’t possibly do before in live-action, because it would be so expensive”.2
This stood out to me because the second point is one of the main reasons why I enjoy animation as a medium this much. Animation allows me to be as creative as I want to be without having to be wary of the limitations. Writing for animation feels almost like an empty playground with an unlimited stack of legos and absolutely no laws of physics to stop me from building whatever I want to. One example of writing for animation that has stayed with me since the first time I read it was the script for the leap of faith scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.3 It goes as such:
“Miles isn’t falling through the frame. He’s RISING” is something I think about every time I watch the film and someday I’d like to be given the chance to write something like this. Something that makes a difference to the animation even when the viewer doesn’t know it.
Continue to the next article