animator - concept artist
ECOGEM TVC
The Making Of
intro
ECOGEM is the TVC animation I am working on for my final year project. The product I am selling is the robot that can change the weather conditions of a selected area, regardless of location or
climate. I choose this product because I believe that in the future, we will be able to live without the fear of natural disasters and hazards.
brainstorming
At the start of the week, we are to come up with different ideas of fictional
products. Most of them were fun ideas. The products I presented to my lecturers were lacking a problem to be solved, not because they were too perfect but because they were lacking the point why people would need them. I finally understand the need of unique selling point at that moment.
During the second week of the semester, while I was talking with my mom and she was telling me about the extreme weather conditions in my country. Suddenly, I stunned for a minute and smiled because the days of struggling with the ideas were over and I have found why we need such a product for this situation.
I sketched out a few ideas that I have in mind. They are all stick to the idea of
creating the suitable weather for the consumer. I first developed the idea from the
firework that can control the weather remotely to the friendly robot companion that can
change the weather to its surrounding area.
There was also an idea where the product acts as a necklace charm, in a more comedic version of the TVC. It shoots out some drones to the sky and control them remotely to create a weather and make pranks at people to pick up a girl. But I remove the idea because it was used in a silly way and also a lot of characters and backgrounds were there to make.
developing stories
There were a bit of hard decisions at creating a story that I really like but had to move on because I was lacking the sense of creating problems and too carried away by it. The first story is about a fashionable girl who wants the weather to go well with her outfit.
story#1
A fashionable girl named "Ebby", who is waiting for a package at her door. She urges to go out but the weather is bad. Once she received the package, she opens it immediately. The package inside is a cute little robot which accompanied her and protects her from the disasters and create a pleasant weather around her. She can finally go out and enjoy the world once again.
character sketches for story#1
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story#2
In a parallel universe, Ebby is a space traveler searching for a planet to land and rest. She found a dying planet and search for any living plants but only there she found a dying plant on a parched land. Then, she uses her terraforming robot to save the planet and rests her day.
Character and robot design sketch for story#2
story#3
After I have discussed with the lecturers on how to make the problem clear and easy to understand the need to use the product. The third story takes place in a farm outside the city where the weather conditions are out of hand and the farm lands are parched to the ground. The land girl named Ebby has found out that her plants are dying and there is no way to help them survive in such an unstable weather condition. That is when the weather changing product will come in handy for her.
Character sketches for story#3
pre-production:
inspiration
I am highly inspired by the artist Anna Cattish from her appealing color designs choices and her uses of very interesting shapes in drawing human characters. The right concept image is made by Tim Probert, director of the show “The Ballad of Bea and Cad” produced by Nickelodeon. His way of character drawing is full of textures for animation and they are very amusing to look at when his character and background are matching.
The reason why I take inspiration from Anna Cattish for character design is to help me support my character poses more readable and semi-realistic texture on my character look to push towards dynamic and lively. At the same time, I applied the shape of the eyes and the square shaped head from the right image above to help me draw and animate faster because the silhouette does not change even when the character turns.
ident development
ECOGEM is a unique company name I come up with to give balance with ecosystem and the technology to support the people all around the world. They are producing the weather changing robot which has the A.I (Artificial Intelligent) feature. Making an ident for such an ecofriendly company is not really hard. I use circular shapes as the base to show its friendly nature. Firstly, I start out with the round shape and give it a little plant on top of it but the silhouette of the logo is not clear. So, I approach other ways around to match with the company slogan and I finally found the design of the logo by giving it three hexagons rotating the big green gem representing the three weather conditions that the product can control – they are winter, summer and autumn.
designing the robot
Eco-bot is the product of ECOGEM. Like its logo, the product also has the round shape and it is first visualise as a pet companion with robotic wings. Later then changes into an A.I robot which can act on its own.
Above is the final design of the robot with the roundish shapes. It is to support the idea of a neat, friendly, reliable robot. It also has emotions and it can calculate the weather on its own adjusts the temperature of the consumer’s enviornment to the pleasant living lifestyle.
character
sketching
I have character explorations of Ebby in different costumes for different enviornments. She is around the age of 16 and an independent girl working at a farm as a land girl. She wears farmer’s dungerees and farmer boots. They usually has their hair ties or use hair bands when they are working on the farm. I peronally like long legs and big load of hair on girl characters.
The color scheme I use for final is to support the background art and to make contrast to separate the character to be able to read the gesture and emotion.
color script
Colorscript is the most fan part for me. It allows me to see the characters interact
with the environment. I have three different color keys to create different moods. The first part of the TVC is very dry and dusty to create the heat and dull the mood of the character. The second comes after the robot come in to the shot and create the wet and active mood for the girl and the last one is when she finds comfort with the product and settles her farming life, the healthy environment.
storyboard to animatic
This is the point where I have the finalized storyboard and translate it into the
animated version with the sound effects to adjust the timing and the duration of the animation. I drew the rough layouts and the character on separate layers to animate them freely in Aftereffects using the cutout animation method.
animatic
designing background for animation
For the backgrounds, I painted as closely as the real life images of how the
parched land looks like. I use more time to paint the backgrounds around 5 hours for each background. The first shot the animation is showing the wilted leaves on the plants of the parched farm. It took some time to figure out how to paint the cracks and the almost rotten vegetables.
There are scenes which I have the continuous panning wide shots to show the surrounding environment of the farm. They are not as hard as I think they would be when I recalled the five point perspective drawing lesson we were taught during the second year drawing class with Mr.Goh Ee Choo. The lessons sure come in handy for this wide shot animation. Once I know how the layouts and where to put the props, I draw the floorplan to make more background painting and for the color guide.
post-production
For my personal reasons, I like to animate on my background layouts and it’s
convenient for me to see where the props and characters are. And for my final project of my school year, I want to create a fine work to extent my limit in producing animation.
color grading and adding special effects
Adding special effects helps improving the animation a lot when it comes to let the audience immerse into the animation. I use mostly TVpaint to do add colors and animate the effects to be able to learn how to do the 2D special effects.
ECOGEM TVC final animation
producing poster art
Making the poster art is pretty straight forward. It is to imagine the best moment
in the animation and translate into the use of the product. I sketch out the compositioninto thumbnails.
Focusing mainly on the product, Eco-bot, the robot which changes the weather
desired by the consumer. It is powerful enough to create storms, seasons and rainbows.
The compositions are mostly dynamic or foreshortened to create the powerful
moment. I choose the first and third thumbnails from the above image but the third one
(above angle) does not translate what the product is doing. It finally comes to the
conclusion to pick the first one which can be seen clearly what the product is doing and
what it is capable of and how the character is happy to have the product.
final poster art for ECOGEM TVC
LASALLE SHOW 2019
The LASALLE graduation show takes place once every year to showcase the student graduation films which are worthy to be curated in one the designated galleries. I am deeply humbled and thankful to place my film in the gallery. Years of training and hard work results in this moment. I wouldn't be here without support from my family, lecturers and my friends. I am in debt to them and I wish to work harder to pay them back one day.
