Smashed Beauty is a short animation by Maria and Max. Smashed Beauty explores and experiments on the concepts of the relation between 2D and 3D animated space, and between animator and animated character/object.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Proposal
Proposal
Our project "Smashed Beauty" will explore the relation between two and three dimensional animation, real and unreal in a surrealist setting.
The main character of Smashed Beauty is both a real and fictional figure, whose look is the main theme of the short film.
The story line is a closed narrative:
four papers sheets are hanging on a glass wall, behind which people walk past in a street. A hand starts drawing a little girl on the first sheet to the left, and when it's done it moves to the second sheet. There it starts drawing a figure that is similar to the little girl, but more abstract. The hand moves to the third sheet and draws an even more abstract and deformed version of the little girl, and when it draws the last version of it on the fourth sheet, the drawing is totally abstract, composed by geometrical figures.
The hand leaves the room, and the abstract geometrical figure on the fourth sheet falls down on the floor from the two-dimensional paper, becoming a three dimensional figure and disappearing from the sheet. The geometrical figures reunite into a little geometrical monster.
The little monster glances at the third drawing and approaches it. She stops in front of it and starts modeling herself in order to looks like the figure on the third sheet. When she sees the second drawing she stops in front of it and starts modeling herself again, in order to become less deformed. As she sees the first and original drawing she does the same, modeling herself until she becomes a little nice girl, as the one who's drawn on the first sheet. When she's done, a foot smashes her down to the floor, leaving on the floor a deformed two–dimensional drawing.
The self-modeling of the figure suggests a surrealist, magic and not rational narrative, mixing it with the real presence of a hand at the beginning. The action in Smashed Beauty is not a series of cause and effect. It is a series of reaction of the fiction world to the actions of the real one.
The project will be filmed in stop-motion, both during the two dimensional phase and during the three dimensional one. We will use a blue screen and transfer the footage into after effects for the further elaboration of the background.
During the shooting in stop motion one of the animators will cover his arm with a piece of blue cloth, in order make an abstract presence out of the drawing hand. The human presence will never be stated as such. The hand and the foot smashing the small figure at the end will be represented more as objects and indipendent characters than parts of a real human being.
Even though the narrative cannot be considered a classic one the end will bring the character to both the start of the short film and to the start of the three dimensional rebellion.
The clear ending is in fact a double ending (the little figure becomes three dimensional and beautiful, than gets smashed and turns into the two dimensional little abstract monster). We will try to give a hope for an happy ending bound to the aesthetic aspect of the story, and than smash both the hope for the obvious and the little girl on the ground, making the abstract and ugly win over the traditional.
Our project "Smashed Beauty" will explore the relation between two and three dimensional animation, real and unreal in a surrealist setting.
The main character of Smashed Beauty is both a real and fictional figure, whose look is the main theme of the short film.
The story line is a closed narrative:
four papers sheets are hanging on a glass wall, behind which people walk past in a street. A hand starts drawing a little girl on the first sheet to the left, and when it's done it moves to the second sheet. There it starts drawing a figure that is similar to the little girl, but more abstract. The hand moves to the third sheet and draws an even more abstract and deformed version of the little girl, and when it draws the last version of it on the fourth sheet, the drawing is totally abstract, composed by geometrical figures.
The hand leaves the room, and the abstract geometrical figure on the fourth sheet falls down on the floor from the two-dimensional paper, becoming a three dimensional figure and disappearing from the sheet. The geometrical figures reunite into a little geometrical monster.
The little monster glances at the third drawing and approaches it. She stops in front of it and starts modeling herself in order to looks like the figure on the third sheet. When she sees the second drawing she stops in front of it and starts modeling herself again, in order to become less deformed. As she sees the first and original drawing she does the same, modeling herself until she becomes a little nice girl, as the one who's drawn on the first sheet. When she's done, a foot smashes her down to the floor, leaving on the floor a deformed two–dimensional drawing.
The self-modeling of the figure suggests a surrealist, magic and not rational narrative, mixing it with the real presence of a hand at the beginning. The action in Smashed Beauty is not a series of cause and effect. It is a series of reaction of the fiction world to the actions of the real one.
The project will be filmed in stop-motion, both during the two dimensional phase and during the three dimensional one. We will use a blue screen and transfer the footage into after effects for the further elaboration of the background.
During the shooting in stop motion one of the animators will cover his arm with a piece of blue cloth, in order make an abstract presence out of the drawing hand. The human presence will never be stated as such. The hand and the foot smashing the small figure at the end will be represented more as objects and indipendent characters than parts of a real human being.
Even though the narrative cannot be considered a classic one the end will bring the character to both the start of the short film and to the start of the three dimensional rebellion.
The clear ending is in fact a double ending (the little figure becomes three dimensional and beautiful, than gets smashed and turns into the two dimensional little abstract monster). We will try to give a hope for an happy ending bound to the aesthetic aspect of the story, and than smash both the hope for the obvious and the little girl on the ground, making the abstract and ugly win over the traditional.
Friday, April 10, 2009
This is work in progress
Smashed Beauty - Short animated film by Max and Maria
Concepts & Sketche
here's a simple sketch of how the metamorphism might happen
transform candy into a figure?
cartoon style bunny into monster,
maybe a little bit too cute for our animation.
Concepts & Sketche
General concepts of the main character.
simple, clear and clean character design for the animation
may also use animal or other abstract figure for the animation
may also use animal or other abstract figure for the animation
here's a simple sketch of how the metamorphism might happen
transform candy into a figure?
cartoon style bunny into monster,maybe a little bit too cute for our animation.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Finalising main character
The main figure
Here is the concept of how the figure going to be drawn, a magical floating pen would be drawing the figure by itself. It would draws the figure few times on different piece of papers, each time the figure gets deforms a little bit, as the pen forgot what its former drawing looks like.
A quick 3D model of the girl. Some of the character scenes can be done in 3D, but it would consume more time compare to stop motion.
Trying to finalize the deformation of our main figure, as the other few concept we did before have a inconsistent pace of deformation, there's a big jump between the 2nd drawing and the 3rd drawing. In this one the deformation is more subtle.
Research
Research
Here are some insipiring research images.
We can have our background shot sperately from the animation, in this way we can have more control, and compose background and the animation together during post-editing. However this will mean that the animation needs to shot at blue screen.
A very cool effect, like the mirror effect. This can be easily done in post production, simply duplicating the animation, scale down and move away by the z-axis then we will have a very amusing pattern of layers of videos. We can also off-set the starting time of each animation, in this way some of the layer will be slightly faster, and some of them starts slower, can be use for a De Jai Vu-like effect.
Having the night time scene for our background can be very cool. Make the animation happen in side a shop and put together with some night scene, in this way it would look like the small model wakes up during the night at the shop.
Love the texture, can use scene like this, grungy and messy.
Abstracted illustrations for the background, this way made the story seems like happen in a chaotic space and time. I like the colours in this illustration, very dynamic, fast movement throughout the whole image.
More abstracted illustration, this one is slightly quieter than the one above, however this still has a lot of noise. The style is really great for background, may need some modification on the colours to fit it into the background of an animation.
Can also use pattern as the background,perhaps animated patterns, how using repetitive pattern can somewhat be distracting.
Here are some insipiring research images.
We can have our background shot sperately from the animation, in this way we can have more control, and compose background and the animation together during post-editing. However this will mean that the animation needs to shot at blue screen.
A very cool effect, like the mirror effect. This can be easily done in post production, simply duplicating the animation, scale down and move away by the z-axis then we will have a very amusing pattern of layers of videos. We can also off-set the starting time of each animation, in this way some of the layer will be slightly faster, and some of them starts slower, can be use for a De Jai Vu-like effect.
Having the night time scene for our background can be very cool. Make the animation happen in side a shop and put together with some night scene, in this way it would look like the small model wakes up during the night at the shop.
Love the texture, can use scene like this, grungy and messy.
Abstracted illustrations for the background, this way made the story seems like happen in a chaotic space and time. I like the colours in this illustration, very dynamic, fast movement throughout the whole image.
More abstracted illustration, this one is slightly quieter than the one above, however this still has a lot of noise. The style is really great for background, may need some modification on the colours to fit it into the background of an animation.
Can also use pattern as the background,perhaps animated patterns, how using repetitive pattern can somewhat be distracting.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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