CINEMATIC :: 09/03/16 - Design and setup

Started to work on designing both the background and spirit characters for this assignment!  So far I've been working with the following design concepts:

• Oscar wants a lake and islands surrounded by trees for the other world
• The sky needs to be cosmic
• involve nebula pillars somehow
• style and creatures need to be consistent

I feel like with the limitations we have, a simple fade to black would work better for our environment, as it drops away rather quickly and extra detail on it would be lost.  This could probably be achieved in After Effects.

I've been having trouble envisioning how the environment would be set up, but here is a concept i intend to run past everyone tomorrow:

At this point I'm not entirely sure if a really detailed cosmic sky would work, as the creatures are going to have to still take precedence against it and still stand out, which might be difficult to do if there are so many colors and things swirling about.  I'll run my concerns past the group tomorrow and see what feedback I can gather.

I haven't drawn up any moodboards for the creatures yet, and at this point i feel like its a bit too late to be messing around with them.  But I'd like to base these creatures off of underwater things to add to the impression of flowing movement.  Combine these with the ebru style 'droplets turning into flowing shapes' idea of the video i posted last week and I think we have a basis for monster shapes and movement.  I particularly want to make these spirits akin to Nudibranchs, whose shapes and colors already have a very ethereal and otherworldy appearance.

With these inspirations in mind, I put together a quick idea sheet for a few spectral creatures:

I quite like the idea of them being faceless or only having the barest hints of facial features.  I feel like it helps to define them as beings that are completely different from us as humans.  The characters here are all quite streamlined and have smooth, natural edges and curves to them too,  Plus, having simpler and streamlined creatures means that they'll be easier to draw and animate, though I'm still not sure if hand drawn animation or symbols would work better for them.  Its something to consider at least, and maybe I'll run a few animation tests on both styles once we've settled on designs for these creatures.

I intended to have one central creature and maybe two others just floating about in the background, but the figurehead creature needs to have a bit more weight and personality to it to make it both look and feel important to the plot.  The first thing that comes to mind, however, is the saint-beast character I drew for my portfolio to enter the college:

  

something with a more distinguishable face might work better though.  Or perhaps I could modify this one to put a face in place of the mask.  I've been looking to things like the forest spirit from princess mononoke and my own dream-visions for inspiration, but I'm still uncertain on how I want this central character to appear.