BACKGROUND DESIGN -  SETTING THE SCENE!

I have talked about the living characters in previous posts but there is another character that is inanimate but still very important:  The Set.

Sets and Locations are really important to the story and should not be underestimated. They help put the film into context and inform both the viewer and the actors. All great live-action films have had great set designers and location managers, while in animation you need great background and layout artists. These departments are all working under the Production Designer in both mediums.

Whatever medium you work in, the design of the backgrounds should always complement the characters and the tone of the story.

The characters in Bird Food have a strong 2D style and the background had to be designed to complement them. The design also had to work with the visual style of the film. This involves taking into account if or how the camera moves, and the functionality of the set within the script.

I have worked on as pre-vis artist on several Brown Bag Films 3D animated television series, overseeing the cameras and scene layout in each production. Shows like “Noddy in Toyland” and “The Octonauts” have involved lots of dynamic camera moves and have had a real cinematic feel to them. This was in perfect keeping with the style and theme of these shows and was exactly what the directors wanted.

But Bird Food is a completely different style.

Despite being the first animated short I’ve directed, I intentionally avoided falling into the trap of wanting to show off my skills in camera movement because I knew it would not serve the story or style. Having worked in 2D animation before I wanted to take what I knew of backgrounds and layout and transfer them to the 3D pipeline I have become so accustomed to.  The visual language of 2D animation is cuts, pans and zooms and I wanted these limitations to be the same on Bird Food.

It must always be remembered that every 3D production still starts life as 2D drawings. This includes the storyboards. So I knew that if the story could be told in the storyboard panels I could keep the camera moves basic and in the visual language of 2D. Luckily I had the fantastic storyboard artist Andy Kelly working on it so what I got back from him was pure gold.

So once I was happy with all of this I needed to get an artist to actually do the design for me. I chatted to one of our resident Art Director wizards, Bronagh O’Hanlon and explained what I was looking for and gave her these references…

Through being a massive fan of the Chuck Jones cartoons I was introduced to the work of the late great Maurice Noble. I absolutely loved his style and really pushed for this to be referenced in the designs that Bronagh would do.

So in no time at all, even with all of her other deadlines, Bronagh came back with this concept sheet of possibilities…

Obviously I was very happy!

I really like the colours in No. 4 and just asked for a few modifications. She came back with the version below which we used as the basis for the final version.

Stay tuned for more on Bird Food soon!