Original design

 

This design was scrapped as it didn't allow to the fluidity of motion I desired for this animated short, as well as being too time-consuming.

The Cigarette Smoker (World In A Room Project)

 

First edit. (NOT final product)

After the initial edit, I decided that the overall tempo and pace wasn't fitting to the plot nor the characters. 

Despite this, I was pleased with the general look of the real-life segment of this short film, but wanted to add more tension between the characters. Further, I was satisfied with the smoothness and pace of the hand drawn animation; it carried the same aesthetics as the initial experiment.

I also experimented with the use of sound and music, but came to the conclusion that it distracted from the aesthetic and loose style of animation I was aiming to achieve.

Analysis of 'World in a room' Project

In this project, I wished to experiment with hand-drawn, traditional style of animation. Using a rotoscope-esque style of production, I wanted to create life-like movements to counter the looser style of drawing in my animation. To select the right clip to animate off of, I often took 5-10 different shots with different angles and actors, which was limited to either myself or one of my three roommates due to COVID restrictions.

To keep a doodle-like effect I decided to use 9B Graphite to animate, as opposed to biro, ink, or watercolour to keep a pencil and loose feeling to the animation. Despite the looseness of the line work of my animation, I wanted the movement of hands and body to be very smooth, this resulted in each frame working on 0.02 seconds each. Initially while I thought this was a good idea, it proved to be very time consuming and didn't allow me to produce all of the shots and 'camera' movement I initially hoped for. The final product took just shy of 500 drawings.

The decision of focusing on hands and feet of the animated antagonist, while not showing the full face of the character arises from the concept of anonymity; that the neighbour could be anyone. This helped with the difference between two characters as well; with the real life actor having multiple close ups of his full face with not much focus on the movement of body but expressions on his face showing his character. This is the opposite of the animated character, as previously mentioned.

I struggled with finding a type of pace in this animation, as the shots didn't fit together well. In retrospect, I believe a more developed and thought through shot list and plan could've assisted me more in post production, editing stages to get the right tempo.

Shot 1 (Ashing Cigarette)

 

Shot 2 (Eye close up)

 

Shot 3 (Sleepy cigarette)

 

Shot 4 (Dropped Cigarette+Smoke)

 

StoryBoard

 

Scene 2 Shot 2 (Lighting Cigarette animation)

 This animation was also my initial test of fluidity of movement and stylistic design.