This week, our focus was on getting some pre production material ready for the animation. We had a lot to finish; designs for the bar and the outside of it, character designs and a storyboard showing the points where the camera would move in the animation. My partner and I chose to work on most stages together, so that we could combine our ideas well.
First, we worked on the setting; we split up and created a rough concept design each for the outside of the bar, before recouping and sharing our ideas.
This was my concept for the bar. I tried including references to some experiments that musk has spoken about, and implications of them going badly, such as the moon colonisation (which resulted in a broken moon, replaced with a robotic one) and a flying car that would explode. Around all this chaos is happy propaganda pictures of musk, creating a contrast between his actions and his portrayal by the controlled media. The bar is called tesla tavern, showing partly the extent of how much of an economic powerhouse musk has become; he went from solely owning tech to owning things as trivial as bars. This was my partner’s design. We both liked the shape of his bar better, as we agreed that it fit the setting nicely. My partner and I agreed that he would draw the final background; a mix of the two, with the shape of his bar and the creativity of mine.In the end, my partner created this background design. He took inspiration from the game cyberpunk 2020, giving the whole thing a cyber punk aesthetic which paired well with the dystopian vibe we had going on. We agreed that in the animation, the bar’s logo would flicker to give off a run down look, and he’d add a robot and a flying car. We put the musk posters around the bar, as they were an easy indicator of the kind of future this was. My partner incorporated neon blue and purple lights into the design, which I think was clever for two reasons; These colours are often associated with unnatural happenings, which adds well to the robotic and cyber aesthetic of the animation, and the neon features made it look more futuristic.I came up with this rough design for the inside of the bar. I tried to include musk branding while not taking away from the characters too much, since they’ll be the main focus for this scene.My partner came up with the idea to incorporate musk branding on to the drinks, which we both thought was a clever and subtle detail, so we went with it.My partner designed the inside of the bar, which matches well with the rest of the place; it has a sense of familiarity to it so the viewer will know where it’s meant to be, but it also has some futuristic elements such as the lights, and some tesla branding. The tesla branding is pretty much everywhere, again reinforcing the fact that musk owns almost everything.
With my partner doing most of the background work, my focus was more on the storyboarding and character designs. At first, we chose to divide the work into one character per person; I would design the male speaker, cyborg with a human head inside a glass tank attached to a robotic, tesla branded body, and he would design the female speaker, an ordinary human girl.
This was my initial design for the boy. I based his outfit on a Robo sapien toy, while keeping his head relatively human looking. I tried giving him an expressive and young-looking face, in part to match his voice, but also because he has a line about not trusting musk near his head, which is ironic since he’s seemingly trusted musk to alter the rest of his body, so I wanted him to be able to pull kind of dumb and cartoony facial expressions to match his character. I made him wear red so that he’d stand out in front of the background, and I added some green gloves to compliment the red. I also gave him a glowing tesla logo, where he can project images out of his body. He’s a result of some kind of a musk experiment; whether it was consensual or not isn’t disclosed, but he seems happy with his robotic body. My partner produced this turn around for the robot boy. Upon further inspection and some opinions from others, we realised that he looked a bit more like a space man than a robot. This was down to my inexperience in drawing robots, but luckily my partner had drawn quite a few, so he redesigned the outfit;This design was less close to human proportions, so it was a lot more effective. The stretchy arms were a cool feature, and the top bit looked a little more dethatched now. I pitched the idea of rounding off the helmet a bit which my partner liked, so we’ll make it more round in future depictions of him.I produced this more polished model sheet of the boy’s faces, trying to capture his overall slightly wacky personality and vibe. I opted to exaggerate his expressions a lot, and i tried working in a style somewhere between mine and my partners. His pupils and mouth are the easiest indicators of his mood; He has to make big expressions since he can’t move his body around naturally like a human.My partner designed this outfit for the girl, but he left out a head for her as he wasn’t confident in drawing girls. I, however, love to draw girls, so I took over the design process for her;I kept her outfit more or less the same, as she’s an ordinary girl and I felt that the outfit was already a good middle ground between normal and futuristic. I liked the purple colouring of it, and I gave her soft yellow hair to contrast with it a bit. I gave her a tanned skin tone as I felt it worked well with her palette, and I included some Tesla branding on the back of her outfit, implying either that musk owns a fashion line or that she works for a company under him and this is her uniform.I also made an expression sheet for her. Her expressions are a little less exaggerated because she’s less of a big character, but she still has her moments. I added a lot of notes, as I knew my partner wasn’t confident in drawing girls and I wanted to try making it easier for him.Next, I worked on the rough thumbnails, depicting when the camera would change angles. I included some contextual shots so that the viewer got a good look at the whole bar before the scene started, as there wasn’t actually going to be a lot of camera movement while the two spoke. As we had extra time, I was able to line and colour this storyboard.
Finally, I created this animatic on TV paint, matching the scenes up to the audio, which was relatively easy and gave an indication of how long each scene would be held. It also gave us an idea of what kinds of other sounds we’d need; some ambience for the bar, drink pouring sounds and a few robotic beeps and boops.
And that was it for this week. Next week, we’ll be able to start doing the rough animation, which I look forward to, but we still have a few steps to go until then.
