Inspected By - Proposal
Inspected By
Summary of Proposed Project
Inspected By (working title) is an entertaining digitally animated short film. Running only a few minutes in length, the film is written and presented in a way that creates a fun atmosphere for the viewing audience.
The goal of this project is to show that a professional level short can be created with off the shelf software on a very limited budget. Animated feature films have large teams and are often produced by studios with near unlimited resources. We are creating a film that has the same production value as a studio film, for little to no money.
One of the ways that we are achieving this is that we are doing all the work ourselves. We will write the story, draw the storyboards, animate and render the final product entirely on our own. This drastically eliminates many expenses and allows us to experience an entire production pipeline.
Inspected By challenges the misconceptions of animation being a simplistic art. This piece is an example of a New Media work that exploits digital imaging software and generates a final piece that has a very high production value.
Detailed Description
Inspected By in an animated short film that frames itself within the standards of the entertainment industry, largely derivative of traditional storytelling and acting methodologies. It draws inspiration from the many pioneers of animated storytelling such as Walt Disney, Milt Kahl, John Lasseter, and Pixar Animation Studios. Inspected By emulates the recognizable appeal of these artists while simultaneously developing its own unique aesthetic. Its originality emerges through unique character development and clever story progression, ensuring that it will do more than simply mimic what has made previous short films of similar nature successful.
As a short film, it is important to have a succinct yet interesting plot that not only engages the viewers but also evokes a particular emotion within a small time frame. Essential to this success is the ability to create believable characters that the audience is able to quickly relate to through refined and well-executed acting as well as creative character design. In addition to this, a fluid and well conceived environment must be constructed for the characters to exist in and interact with. The flawless combination of each of these elements contributes to the overall aesthetic of the animated short film. Creative crafting and manipulation of each element is what forms the unique qualities of the film. With Inspected By, a lot of effort has gone in to the development each of these aspects.
The main character, Lou, exists within a flawless factory environment, designated with the job of evaluating flawless machine-made children’s toys. This mechanical perfection is directly contrasted by his organic imperfections. The story focuses mainly on his struggle to cope with these imperfections as they begin to interrupt his ability to execute his necessary tasks. Though watching him struggle amuses the audience, they will ultimately feel pity for his unfortunate shortcomings. As the plot progresses, the complexity of the character will be fluidly unveiled to the audience, with each scene adding more depth to the character through his actions. Ultimately, he will undergo an entire character transformation by the end of the film, shifting the audience’s emotion along with his own.
The complexity of the character is mirrored by the complexity of the environment he exists in. A massive and fully operational toy-manufacturing factory surrounds him. Though the stage itself barely exceeds the boundaries of the character’s wingspan, it is important that the set appears to be just as alive as the Lou himself. In this instance, a bland environment would lead to a bland character. Extreme care is taken in crafting the most minute details to bring the set to life, giving Lou the ability to fully interact with the intricacies of the environment he inhibits. Once again, a contrast is seen between the rigid, hard-edged perfection of the factory structure and the soft bodied organic imperfections of Lou. Regardless of the visible differences, Inspected By is able to seamlessly mesh each complex element together to create an enjoyable short film.
However, the most important consideration is the ability to make the complexities appear transparent so that the audience is able to enjoy the simplicity of the film. If these complexities are made blatantly apparent to the audience, the simple charm of the story can easily be lost. The vehicle for achieving this task will be pantomime acting.
Pantomime dates back to ancient Greece, encompassing the theatrical genres of tragedy and comedy. It is an extremely effective method of conveying emotion and characterization due to its exaggeration of body language, perfectly suiting it to comedic animation. Andrew Stanton, director of the animated movie Wall-e, explains “the traditions of pantomime reach back to the roots of pure cinema. Storytellers of the silent-film era invented a pictorial language of montage that still defines how we watch movies” (Hauser, 9). Staging and stylized acting are expressed solely through facial expression and body language, void of any dialogue. Earlier examples of this can be found in Commedia dell’arte, an expressive form of theater that originally began in Italy. Cinematic examples can be found in silent films featuring acting greats such as Charlie Chaplin, or Buster Keaton. These performers were able to portray comedic characters while still maintaining levels of depth that weren’t immediately made apparent throughout the story. In animation, pantomime becomes especially relevant, as the goal is often to create exaggerated personalities with exaggerated characteristics. Animators such as Richard Williams, Milt Kahl, Grim Natwick and Ken Harris all mastered the art form, breathing an immense amount of life in to their characters that had never been seen before in animation. Many of these animators utilized the traditions of pantomime in order to develop their own style, and this is exactly what the intentions of Inspected By are.
Drawing from many inspirational sources, Inspected By hopes to tell an entertaining story that is reminiscent of the classics many people admire. Primary inspiration can be found in such movies as The General (1927), starring Buster Keaton. The plot is relatively thin, but the characterization is phenomenal. Keaton is able to portray each individual emotion strictly through his body, evoking moments of laughter, concern, or pure entertainment. Though his particular brand of slapstick comedy does not entirely apply to the desired style of Inspected By, Keaton’s perfection of pantomime is enlightening. As Stanton explains, “it makes you realize that we actually lost more storytelling skills than we gained as a result of going to sound” (Hauser, 9). Silent film actors such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are the epitome of cinematic pantomime, and provide a robust supply of inspiring material. Animated inspiration is even more extensive, however, as it relates directly to what we’re doing. Among the best are legendary Disney animators such as Art Babbit or Ken Harris. These are artists who pioneered the world of animation, discovering its intricacies and sharing them with the world through their creative storytelling. Falling under the umbrella of Disney is the most influential resource available: Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar is ultimately our greatest source of inspiration, not just from the work they have down, their cultural influence. Primarily, they have created an abundance of memorable films and short films, each one a successive masterpiece to the last. Their short films such as One Man Band (2005), Lifted (2006), and Presto (2008) have all earned their success and appreciation through creative story telling and wonderful charm. Their feature films are even more renowned, earning multiple awards and nominations in a variety of fields. Pixar has unquestionably had a significant cultural impact, ranging from inspiration from their films to education through their school. Though Inspected By will not be able to match the massive scope of Pixar’s cultural contribution, we hope to make a similar, yet respectfully smaller contribution.
Inspected By will have a place in the community. The learning process of its realization will be documented and shared with the public. We hope to contribute to the community by providing inspiration and education to those who are in a similar position to us. (Hauser)Ultimately, we aim to contribute a greater understanding of animated story telling as more than just shallow entertainment, but a true art form.
Research Plan and Methodologies
Workflow
Our production pipeline is very straightforward and simple. It consists of software that we already own, or have access to so purchasing licenses will not be included in our budget. It is as follows:
Reference
The largest area of research for the film is reference. The reference we collect is groups of photographs of various elements, articles of clothing, items for the setting and objects that show us what the digital models should look like. Flickr and Google Image search are great resources for finding reference images. These images can be used to help better understand our character, setting and props. Using these photographs as reference, we can pay attention to the little details of these objects to make the film more realistic.
FPN541/2
We both took FPN541/2 taught by James Warrack, which are introduction to and advanced Maya classes. These classes teach foundation skills for modeling and animating in 3D software packages. The hands on section of the courses are taught by an industry professional, Sherwin, who is our mentor on this project. Sherwin provides us with professional workflow tips and tricks that make rigging and animating our character easier and more efficient.
Video Tutorials
We have access to an entire library of 3D modeling and animating video tutorials. The topics covered by these videos include: “Creating Cartoon Characters” and “Creating Cartoon Sets” to name a few. These videos provide excellent suggestions and techniques for 3D cartoon animations. In addition to our library of video tutorials Sherwin has also provided us with print tutorials as well. These documents focus on modeling characters for a professional rigging and animation pipeline.
Animators Survival Kit
Richard Williams was the Director of Animation for the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He wrote a book titled The Animator’s Survival Kit, which describes and illustrates formulas, principles and methods of animation. This book is well respected in the animation industry and is a very helpful aid to character animation.
The Art and Science of Digital Compositing
After all the animation is done in Maya, all the rendered layers and passes need to be composited together. There are many different compositing techniques that will give professional results. Ron Brinkmann’s The Art and Science of Digital Compositing is an excellent guide to using our compositing package, Shake. This book will be very helpful understanding 3D compositing.
Lucas Martel – Pigeon Impossible
Lucas Martel is a 3D animator that has spent the last four years creating a digitally animated short film titled Pigeon Impossible. He produces a weekly podcast where he walks through different stages of his planning, production and postproduction of his film. His podcasts are very valuable and have tips for saving time during production and while rendering.
Feasibility
Inspected By, requires a demanding skill set in the areas of modeling, animation and compositing. We have these skills and using the resources stated previously, we will further improve upon them to achieve a better result.
Budget
Our goal is to create a professional 3D animated short film using off the shelf software on a limited budget. With independent animated films, the majority of the budget is spent on software licenses and computer hardware. We already have access to powerful workstations as well as a thirty-node render farm for our final renders. These computers are fully licensed with all the software stated previously in our production pipeline so no additional software licenses need to be purchased. This makes our estimated cost of production very small.
We really only require one item to be purchased for the production of Inspected By, storage. We will be rendering all of our images at 2K resolution (2048 px by 1080 px). This creates very large file sizes throughout the production and postproduction pipeline. We will purchase our own 500GB external hard drive that will allow us to store an estimated 40 minutes of assets. This is an excess amount of storage seeing how our film will only run a few minutes in length. This hard drive will be backed up daily so that a copy is always available if there is any type of drive failure.
This said, having extra storage and render nodes will be of huge help to us. While we might have enough storage (in GB) splitting the storage up among different render nodes will allow renders to finish much faster. We plan on rendering the majority of our project on a personal render farm of three computers at Cam’s house. Additional funds would allow us to purchase extra nodes to add to this render farm, and can shave days off our final rendered passes.
A miscellaneous amount of $100 was added to our budget. This refers to any textures, rigs or extra storage that we may need to purchase to finish production.
We have already acquired some of the funds needed to create this film and will work and apply for awards to pay for the other costs.
Bibliography
Brinkmann, Ron. The Art and Science of Digital Compositing. Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.
Hauser, Tim. The Art of Wall-E. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008.
Martel, Lucas. Pigeon: Impossible. 1 October 2008. 2 October 2008 <http://www.pigeonimpossible.com>.
Maya Video Tutorials. Dir. Digital Tutors. Digital Tutors. 2008.
Warrack, James. “FPN541/2.” Digital Animation Concepts. Toronto: Ryerson University, 4 September 2007.
Williams, Richard. The Animator’s Survival Kit. New York: Faber and Faber, 2001.
Yahoo! Flickr Users. Image Search. 6 October 2008. 6 October 2008.
