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STORYTELLING

VERTIGO

1. Ideation Map
2. Narrative: 

  • Act Structure

  • Synopsis

  • Genre and Animation 

  • Antagonist

  • Building the script

  • Script
     

3. Moodboard
4. Character Design
5. Storyboard - Draft 
6. Storyboard
7. Production Schedule
8. Production:

  • Illustrator: design

  • Character Animator: Lips Sync

  • After Effects: Rigging, walking cycle, lighting  scenes compositing

  • Sound

9. Pitch
10. Final Animation
11. References

1. IDEATION MAP

2. NARRATIVE:

  • ACT STRUCTURE

  • VERTIGO SYNOPSIS

This is the story of Anne Hebutard, a famous painter 1920s who lived tormented because of her fame. Looking always for excellent artwork, she was significantly depressed until she decided to give up that empty celebrity world to have an everyday life.

  • GENRE AND ANIMATION

Vertigo belongs to the drama genre with a primal animation where the character explores melancholic and depressive emotions.

  • ANTAGONIST

Herself. Within melancholic, sad feelings and thoughts.

  • BUILDING THE SCRIP: 

  • Following the Journey of the Hero rules

  • Chain of events

  • Causally linked

  • Defined passage of time and space

  • Typically feature protagonists

  • Often built around conflict and resolution

  • Defined goals while overcoming an obstacle

​

  • SCRIPT

Facial Expressions

3. MOODBOARD
 

This story is placed on the time of the 1920s. The concept that I will use for the character focuses on the clothing, hair, and make-up of the women of that time. I will use the Art Deco style for buildings and backgrounds, and to get more dramatic in the animation, I will use the film noir style.

4. CHARACTER DESIGN

My character, Anne Hatenbour, is about 39 years old, and we could call it a femme fatal. She lives surrounded by luxury and high social status due to her acclaimed fame as a painter. She has several lovers, but she is committed to her career as a painter, and she does not have a family or get married in mind. Suffering from severe depression for several years due to internal dissatisfaction and an overwhelming desire to seek perfection in her paintings.
Within the physical appearance from the 1920s, slim, very white skin, short hair with bangs, and black eyes. She smokes a pipe and dresses with a long cape and dresses in black because, according to her, black is synonymous with beauty and elegance.
 

5. VERTIGO STORYBOARD DRAFT AND NOTES

Below I show some notes of ideas that were emerging and that I could later use for the animation.

6.STORYBOARD

I have been modifying the storyboard as I progressed in the animation compositing. I moved some scenes because I considered that they fit better at the end of the composition, and I added new ones that expressed better my final idea. The storyboard shows the different phases of the narrative design. The character follows the rules of "Journey of the Hero".

7. PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

I consider that even the production sheets should have a design representing something related to the animation; with that in my mind, I have designed the schedule using something very characteristic of my character, his smoking pipe. On this, I reflected the production times to arrive on time for the final delivery.

8. PRODUCTION

  • ILLUSTRATOR PRODUCTION

It has been quite a challenge to create a complete animation with vectors due to the double or almost triple work involved if we compare it with other ways of designing. However, Illustrator has always been one of the software accompanying me since I started studying graphic design a few years ago. So I felt very comfortable designing the character, scenes and other assets for the animation.
I show below some screenshots of the production in Illustrator.

1920 hair, long eyelashes, and defined eye-brown. Very thin marked facial features.

1920 style of smoking cigars with pipes. Dresses tight to the thin body. 

Performance of Anne's mind-door in Art Deco style.
The door exists in reality in Brussels. Ernest Delune design 1902.
 

Leafs compositing for Anne minds´s scene. I used random shapeswith black and white  gradients and finally joined all together to create one leaf. After that, I duplicated many times the leaf changing the size and orientation to create a bunch.

Light lamp Victorian Style using as reference the light lamp of Tooting Broadway - London.

Design of the Street backgroung using shapes and gradiants

Classic black cape

Facial Expressions that I will use in my character.

Representation of Anne's indecisions. She always feels on a tightrope and about to fall into a depression.

Collapse of the artist´s life. Building from above.

Walking cycle Anne design.

Anne's hand ready to smoke

Scary shadows inside of Anne´s mind.

Top angle Perspective of the building and street

Working in the city´s fog 

Living room Anne´s house

Beaux Art Picasso studio´s door in Paris reference to be used in a scene. It´s the door of Anne´s mind.

Designing reflexs on the glass door.

Scary facial Expression for inside car scene

Scary design for another scene.

Long and bony scary hands are similar to the hand's witches to convey fearful emotions.

The madness of the artist.

  • CHARACTER ANIMATOR: LIPS SYNC

As part of this year's learning, we had lips sync animation. For this, I got online references for the visemes. I worked on them in Illustrator and later in Character Animator, where it has a function of lips sync with the audio.

References used to reproduce the visemes.

  • AFTER EFFECTS PRODUCTION

  • RIGGING WITH DUIK BASEL

Trying to take an "issues stone" up. That stone means all of the deep and depressing feelings of the character.

  • WALKING CYCLE - Film Noir style

The stars of film Noir had a peculiar way of walking and posing, and I have tried to reproduce those movements with my character taking the Sunset Boulevard film reference. 
The movement was too rigid. I also added some puppet points to flex the legs to give a natural flexion knee.

  • AFTER EFFECTS SCENES PRODUCTION

I used Park Lane NF regular as the text font for the entire composition. This font evokes the typography used in Art Deco and Art Nouveau, so it seemed very appropriate for the style of the project.

For this scene, I used the sketch effect in After Effects, which consists of obtaining the effect of a pencil drawing on a photo or video, playing with its threshold.

For this scene I designed the silhouette of my character and covert into alpha matte to get the transparent silhouette, after that I added a video inside of the transparency and modify its shape with keyframes in the timetable to get a walking cycle.

Tightrope scene It is a representation of the artist's feelings. She feels in constant balance in her life. The scene is designed in Illustrator as you can see in the above screenshots. 
I exported to After Effects converting into shape from the vector layer to move the Ann´s arm to simulate the movement of balancing. The character never jump. It´s only a figurate scene 

This scene represents what was in the artist's mind, music, nature, art... and later his life becomes a continuous vertigo represented by the next tightrope scene. It's designed in illustrator and just zoom in to invite the viewer into your mind.

The collapse of the artis´s life scene. I wanted to play with the cameras' perspectives in the project. This one, the view starts from above to make the viewer feel what the character is narrating, the collapse of her life. The scene falling into the void signifies the collapse of the artist's life.

A Feature of the Noir film and comic is the Venetian curtains. I wanted to add this feature to my project because the animation project evokes this style. 

In the docks scene, I wanted to reflect the movement of the spotlights pointing to the city sky, similar to the Batman film. The camera moves to focus on the bridge to come through the next scene where Anne is driving. I added a siren ship to do the realistic scene.

I used the wiggle expression in the position to generate realistic movement in the different scenes when Anne is driving.

I created the scene´s speed by adding lines, adjusting their position, and changing the lines' strokes.

Add an asset and rain sound for the scenes where it was present to express loneliness, darkness, humidity in the environment, the inner tears of the artist.

  • LIGHTING

The light was another aspect that I worked hard on to create depth in the scenes using Ramp effects. I reflected on clothing using shapes using glow effects on the moon to get fog. Create shadows under Anne's car, directional light, points etc.

Glow effect to get fog

Ramp effect of getting depth scenes.

Point lights to get light coming from the moon.

Point light to get fog.

 I wanted to represent the artist's dissatisfaction haunts Anne wherever she goes. The shadow is the shape of herself. The double image effect is a feature common in the film noir comics that fits the idea of surprise that I wanted to convey where the viewer focuses on Anne's scarred face and, at the same time, on the shadow seen in the rearview mirror. 

I designed the scenes of depression and dissatisfaction in a dark, dramatic way and tried to speed up the execution so as not to let the viewer take their eyes off the screen. The voice recordings that I made in this part of the script are theatrical with much drama; I used the Voice Over of Thriller by Michael Jackson as a reference.

Above, there is another one of the scenes where I used another type of camera perspective, and it offers the viewer another image of the animation without abandoning the flow.
It places the viewer in another point of the city, specifically at the door of a theatre where you can read our protagonist's name. She is famous for her art, and however, the following scenes show that she is miserable.

Alone, unhappy, dissatisfied... this scene shows those feelings that we have all felt at some point. This scene runs slowly, under the rain, so the viewer listens to the music that accompanies that feeling of loneliness and feels sorry for Anne. The wind sound and the rain join the objective I tried to achieve.

I converted this scene to 3D to position the camera in the bottom right corner to create a bottom view, and in the next stage, I panned the camera from right to left. I achieved the cape's movement by playing with the shapes layer and keyframes.

In the scene below, Anne looks for a way out of her depression, but it's impossible she feels like a puppet controlled by it. Again, the V.O. and the scene have an important role here.

In this scene, my character fights against his destiny. He feels like he is inside a jail. The lateral lines of the background represent the bars of a cell. The painting in the middle of the room represents the artist's madness. He is at a crossroads and sees only two options.
The scene comes through the door. I used as a reference the Picasso studio door in France. I love the architecture of that Village, and I wanted to use it in my project. 
The camera comes into the jail- the mind of Anne showing what happens there and then come back runaway from the madness claws.
Use a layer mask to make the rest of the second scene behind the door disappear, leaving only Anne in the centre, painting her madness on a canvas. The scene ends with the claws of madness trying to grab our character and the viewer.

The flow of the animation continues in the next scene, where Anne has to accept her fate. I have used the heart and the ace of the poker deck to open up different interpretations and avoid hurting any sensitivity. However, the initial idea of the animation's outcome is the flight to another life where no one, not even her depression and madness, could demand anything.
The light lamp represents a light on the road where Anne has to stop and choose her destination. The camera Zoom out exits the scene showing the viewer the two options.

Anne has accepted her fate but wants to offer the viewer a farewell message: Remember me! She asks the viewer never to forget that she always tried to provide the world with the best of her art.
The only colour other than black and white that I have used in the animation has been in this final scene. That red light represents the character in another place. I used line layers to create a turning effect of the character that addresses the viewer to say: remember me! I added a point of light on the face of Anne to make sure the viewer focuses only on her.

  • SOUND

  • Soundtrack: Stephan Moccio is one of my favourite piano composers, and this year, I used two of his creations for my projects. The artwork for Vertigo is called Sea Change, and it fits perfectly with the emotions of nostalgia, loneliness and despair that I wanted to express in my project.

  • I Downloaded ship siren, running car, rain, and scary sound effects from the internet to use them in a specific scene.

  • I recorded the V.O. of my character to give her the drama and the feeling of loneliness that I wanted to convey. 

VERTIGO PITCH

I was working in Illustrator and Indesign to create an A5 book with all of the essential concepts of Vertigo Animation: Synopsis, act structure, character design, and a specific mood board with three postal cards, one advertising illustration, and one party invitation. The main idea is to introduce the potential investors in the story and the time and atmosphere with the cards, offering a party invitation as an honours guest after the exhibition of the character represented by the advertising illustration. 

10. FINAL ANIMATION

11.REFERENCES

Sketch effects : 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vX594kuUA&t=506s
Scary Sound Effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OQtJaV54bs
Rain sound effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6G0EuPAoKQ
 

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