DGA230 – Pre-production Bible Production Report

Dang Kuan DGA230 – Production Report

For the pre-production bible, I volunteered to help out Jack French’s project “Lucid”. His production bible group consisted of Jack himself, Vaidas Vismanas, Rory Free, Erin Clarke, Armand Taza and me. I decided to work on Lucid because I thought the artist’s style (Saul Steinberg) really resonated with me and it seemed like an interesting idea. I found the style to be simple, yet comedic and I thought it integrated with Lucid’s story really well, as it had a comic feeling to its story beats as well as in character expressions and design along with the general atmosphere and tone of the project.

We were first given the task to observe and practice Saul Steinberg’s art style and apply it to drawing the characters and environments of the project. We started off practicing how to draw the main character, as the body and facial proportions weren’t fully established yet, although the character design gave us a rough idea to work with. Jack already started working on establishing the character design as well as working on other character/creature designs for the office setting and dream world setting. Vaidas worked on character turnarounds to help establish the main character’s dimensions and proportions. Rory worked on poses and character design for the pen, as well as other creature designs. I worked on making dynamic poses for the character in order to give a better idea of how the character would interact with the environment as if it were in a final animation. My dynamic poses were drawn with mannerisms and expressions that gave the main character a confused, cautious, worried or scared look. Saul Steinberg’s simplistic style made it relatively easy to draw the character, as his style dictates that characters wouldn’t normally be anatomically feasible or correct.

I later on drew up some hand poses for the main character to establish the hand design after looking through Saul Steinberg’s art as well as the character turnarounds. Saul Steinberg’s style of drawing hands tended to look less realistic but still had a cohesive sense to them as they were generally more anatomically correct. Vaidas and Jack also established character heights, dimensions and proportions again with new character turnarounds and designs for the main character and the boss character. A colour scheme was also being developed as weren’t exactly sure how if the project should be bright, vibrant and colourful similar to a narcotics effect or a more drab and dull colour palette. Both seemed like good ways to go forward with the project, as making it colourful (particularly in the sections where the main character is in the dream world) fit the story, whereas making it drab with black and white made the style a lot more reminiscent of Saul Steinberg’s colour palette in his artwork. It was decided to make the ‘office’ sections with the main character, now given the name “Bob”, colourless to accentuate the dull theme of Bob’s day-to-day life. The dream world sequence wouldn’t be in vibrant colours, but instead a sort of beige, brown like colour scheme similar to old paper that still gave the dream world colour while keeping to Saul Steinberg’s aesthetic.

I later drew up more dynamic poses for Bob in the different settings (office and dream world). This time, with the character design and proportions being more firmly established, it melded well with the rest of the bible. I also added in colouring to the poses and hands to help flesh out the poses. The colour palette developed by the group gave a dark, brooding feeling in his office setting with dark and light greys, while the dream world setting colourises him in bright yellows and tans that make him stand out more.

I started creating concept art for the bible later on with a shot of Bob looking into the horizon of the dream world while standing on a large face in a sea, with giant flying bird-like creatures in the sky. My original idea was a variation of this in which the sea is replaced with multiple faces looking towards the sky, forming a sort of ‘sea of faces’. This concept was later changed to the singular face, as it took away a lot of focus from Bob and cluttered the canvas a bit too much. I painted the background in a sort of bright yellow with a dark aura as the background, as I thought this matched a minimalist attitude while keeping a ‘dream-like’ feel. This didn’t match Saul Steinberg’s background style very well, as it was too complex and detailed. We were originally uncertain of what kind of backgrounds would be used for the bible. It was later decided that an old paper aesthetic would be used for both settings, as this matched Saul Steinberg’s minimalist background style while keeping it from feeling too empty like with a plain white background. I later applied this to my concept art for use in the bible (the first page).

I also drew up another piece of concept art of the boss character (with cat ears) pouring Bob out of a tea kettle. I chose this and the previously mentioned shots from Jack’s animatic because I felt that these represented the project really well and looked like stills you would put on a poster. This concept art kept the style of having a yellow background with a dark grey aura as a variation from Saul Steinberg’s style.

For my test shot, I was given the shot where Bob initially falls into the sea after chasing the running pen. It wasn’t too difficult drawing the running and falling/jumping animations for the characters, as character movement cycles had been established beforehand. I thought this shot also worked well in representing a small slice of how the project would be as an entire short film, as it had the right comedic tone and atmosphere with Bob trying and failing to chase down his pen and falling into the sea.

In general I thought this pre-production bible project was interesting and fun to do, as it let me try out drawing in a different artist’s style in concept art as well as applying that to animation. It was an interesting experience researching, observing and practicing while learning how to apply different styles from different artists.