After the first interim, I had a pretty solid idea on where to go next with my project. With a new rough script ready, I began trying to build an animation around it: to enhance and build off of the words, rather than overshadow them. Since one of the main feedbacks from the interim was to try and make the scenes feel more connected, the first concept sketches were all based on connection, with each time period flowing into the next almost seamlessly, through objects that would carry through between them. The dust from a cave painting going into a Renaissance artist’s paint, which would be used for a painting that gets shown in a museum, which gets photographed and posted online, and so on.
I also decreased the number of separate scenes / time periods the animation would go through: this was in hopes of making it simpler to follow, and making the connections feel more relevant and important. With those few ideas in mind, I drew some simple thumbnails for the whole animation. The shots and time periods would remain almost unchanged from here on out, with only a couple shots being slightly altered to help with the story’s flow.
A suggestion from the interim I also kept in mind was the idea to keep humans “ambiguous” until the very end of the animation: this could help add some payoff to the alien reveal, and make for slightly more nuanced storytelling. To pull it off, I framed all the shots to never directly show a human face: they would always either be out of frame, turned away from the camera, or covered by something else (e.g. a mask in a campfire scene). This approach made me think a lot harder about how to frame each shot: including faces in a composition is such an obvious thing, that having to consider how to cut them out without sacrificing any storytelling information was a challenge. But in the end, I think it made for much more interesting shot choices overall, while maintaining the ambiguity of the species (as if they were being observed by an alien species), and I’m glad I went with this approach.
Before starting work on the full animatic, I wanted to finalize the professor’s design: while the paper drawing I drew after the first interim was good, it didn’t quite feel finished, and some details needed changing. Mainly, the suction cups on his arms would have been very tough to animate consistently, so I decided to remove them (while still keeping his arms the same). I also slightly changed his pupils: while I do think the octopus eyes I gave him were pretty cool, there was something about them that made them feel a bit lifeless, so I switched to a more normal eye-shape.
For the colour scheme, I simply went with the same one I gave the previous design, as it still worked well enough to show him as a benevolent (but clearly non-human) character.
Finally, I started working on my animatic: the shots were kept almost identical to the thumbnails, only really changing a shot in the campfire scene and removing a close-up of the students in the classroom scene (in favour of a panning shot).
To keep the scenes distinct from one another, I used a different colour for each time period: red for the earliest scenes, green for the painter scenes, purple for the museum and website, and black for the classroom. Originally, the idea was to have each period have a limited colour palette, shared between the backgrounds and humans.
With all the boards done, I did a rough recording of myself reading the script, only to find that it was slightly too long to properly fit. I cut out a few words and sections to make it flow better, and it managed to fit within about 80 seconds. I timed everything out according to the sound, and connected all the scenes together in a single file.
I considered what to do for the background music for a while: keeping it quiet the whole way through (excluding the narration) felt a bit creepy, but I also didn’t want to use music without a good reason. That is when I had an idea: the Voyager Golden Record was a big inspiration when first starting the project, as it was a display of humankind’s creative nature and its curiosity towards space and alien life. It contained various images and, most importantly, songs: and with a quick search and listen, I was able to find some instrumental tracks that could work great as background music.
I eventually went with Beethoven’s “Cavatina” string quartet: it’s a very calm song, with a hint of sombre to it, which I thought worked great with an alien talking about our art in a future where we’re supposedly long-gone. I made it play throughout the human scenes, from the beginning of the animation to the start of the classroom scene, at which point the sound goes silent besides the professor’s voice as he talks directly to his class.
The decision to include the Golden Record also affected the ending: originally the professor simply clicked a button on a remote, and the screen cut to black. But after including the music, I decided to add the Record itself to the professor’s desk, making the soundtrack be diegetic. And instead of cutting straight to black, the professor’s remote activates the record, playing Johnny B. Goode (another song from within the Record), accompanying the credits with an upbeat tune. I believe this made for a much more entertaining ending to the piece, and I’m very happy I decided to change the ending to make it work.
Then came the time to make a proof of concept: to give myself an idea on how I wanted the animation to look like, I made some rough colour tests on my phone, making each environment monotone. However, when discussing my ideas with Stuart, I was given the suggestion to make them duotone somehow. I took that idea and decided to make the humans contrast the backgrounds with their colours: green humans for the red scenes, yellow humans for the purple scenes and so on. Making them stand out gave the animation a much more distinct feel, so I started working on the proof of concept with that in mind.
Since I had a lot of work to get done, I decided to base the proof of concept on a simple scene: going from the green painting room to the purple art gallery, to showcase how the scene transitions would work, as well as showing the human colours contrasting with their environments. I decided to make the backgrounds lineless, to further separate them from the humans.
The transition between scenes went well, but a zoom-out from the painting to the art gallery’s full room gave me some trouble: since I’d forgotten about ToonBoom’s camera node movement and 3D layer system, I simply stretched the whole art to fit the shot, which made some lines appear too thin and pixelated. I would later fix this problem in the final animation by using actual camera movement, but the proof of concept shows my forgetfulness. Still, I believe it shows off my animation’s style quite well, so I’m happy with it overall.
With everything done, I put everything in a presentation and got ready to showcase everything for the second interim.
Overall, everything was well-received, my classmates liked the tone and vibe of the animation, and the tutors were happy with the changes I made, from the story to the character designs. The feedback was less substantial than before, but still useful: including real (or parodied) paintings in the art gallery, using a voice distorter for the narration to make it sound more alien, giving the green scenes more artistic inspiration, and including images from the Voyager were some of the main ones. I was also suggested to cut down on the classtime at the end, but I personally really liked those scenes, as it felt like a proper payoff to the mystery surrounding the first minute of animation. Still, I took note of all the feedback and considered how to act on it moving forward.
At this point, I realised how much there was to do and how little time there was to do it: rough animation, clean-up and colour in just over a month’s time felt crazy, but I knew I’d do my best to get it all done in time.