COLORING BACKGROUNDS 🌁

Initially, I allocated specific colours to each scene.

    

Storyboard for DEINAMUU - colour 

When developing scenes, I began using a mix of colours unrelated to the assigned colour and struggled to keep them concise.

 

FIG 1: Scene 1 background 

 

I created backgrounds by hand painting the scenes and props, then enhancing and compositing the final picture on photoshop. Working with photoshop allowed me to adjust hues and saturations of aspects of the scene, in a way it could easily blend with each other. With this method, although I was creating nice scenery’s, I was losing a sense of the general colour assigned to the scene as shown in fig 1.

My prime observation when painting scene 1 was that perhaps I used too many colours. While reading about how colour is used in cinematography I learnt the issue was mainly that I didn't use the colours properly.

I then decided to use the three colour rule. In this rule;

 60% of the scene should be the primary colour

 30% of the scene should be the secondary colour

 10% of the scene should be the accent colour

I tested the appeal this can bring by recolouring a scene from a Netflix film titled ‘Black Rosé’.

Yellow is the Primary colour

Green is secondary

Brown is the accent 

      

         FIG 2: Black Rose

     

   FIG 3: Watercolour remake 

The scene remake is similar to scene 3 in DEINAMUU. The acquired knowledge I derived from testing the colours of the scene helped to create an appealing background. The background was done digitally isolating even more colours than the hand painting. 

I then experimented by creating the main characters with more colour range. This made the visuals have more of a dreamy overlook.

FIG 4: Scene 3 of DEINAMUU

                     

 

The washed-out backgrounds toned with light greys and contemporary colours helps create a nice contrast to the characters. This gives a sense of hierarchy in the scene and helps to lead the focus.

                  

    FIG 5: Scene 4 of DEINAMUU

Finally, the storyboard was recoloured to help as a guide to identifying the Primary, secondary and accent colour in was built scene.

          

FIG 6: Refined storyboard

TESTING 2D ANIMATING SOFTWARES 💻

 This post is to show my personal progression with 2D animation softwares. I tested Flipaclip, procreate, photoshop , after effects and Toon Boom Harmony.

FLIPACLIP - 4.6 stars rating on IOS 

I practiced on the professional version of the software using an Ipad.

This simple application has basic animating tools like layers, a range of brush and pencil sizes, lasso, paint bucket and Text. It can also control the number of frames per second and it creates an onion skin while animating. Although it is very responsive, it has limited layers and it didn't provide brushes that I needed. 

fig 1.  village

PROCREATE - 4.5 star rating on IOS

This application is rumoured to be the best software for drawing on iPad. It has a wide range of brushes that can be easily manipulated and effects. The animating tools are similar with Flipaclip. The amount of layers limited and is dependent on the size of the canvas, therefore the application cannot stand a long scene. 

fig 2 body stretch ( Flora)

PHOTOSHOP AND AFTER EFFECTS

These are both Adobe softwares.

Similar to procreate, photoshop has a wide range of brushes and textures, the application can stand larger files than previous softwares discussed but it has the same basic animation tools with the previously discussed softwares. 

I created test by drawing and rendering on photoshop, then exporting the files to after effects to composite and refine the motion.

This method is really time consuming and it created stiff movement when trying to make alterations

TOON BOOM HARMONY

Toon boom Harmony became my most preferred software to animate on, mainly because it is used widely in industry examples of popular animations are Danger mouse, Archer and Simpsons. The application contains a vast library of animation tools suitable for all types of 2D animation. 

The software allows me to create long scenes and stores the different attributes in a folder. My most preferred tool, which isn’t in the other applications is the nodes view. It helps me organise components in scenes and alter them without making changes to the surrounding. There is a wide range of brushes and the colour palette is created in a way that you can make major changes at once. Lastly there are various shortcuts that help with time management.

Conclusion

Experimenting on these softwares has helped me realise how to use them best.

Toon boom is used to animate. Photoshop and procreate is used to create backgrounds and concept art. After effects would be used for final compositing