With a general plot established and backstory in place it was time for storyboards and animatics to nail down the moment to moment action and direction. Before this I took the time to visually design Erica in order to understand how to choreograph the action and plan her movements based on visual design.

At this stage I also decided that I would animate my film in Adobe Flash, a program I was very familiar with. I was curious about using ToonBoom or making the switch to Adobe Animate, but given the ambitious nature of my project I wanted to make sure I was working in a package I was comfortable with rather than potentially wasting time.

ERICA APHIS

Erica’s visual design is intended to communicate a level of confidence and style as well as athletic ability and self expression. The baggy sweatpants and straps being a modern staple of Korean streetwear. The running crop top intended to communicate speed and agility as well as her flexible white shoes. The tattoo on her arm is a snake, this is further based on the myth of Erichthonius.

Erichthonius was born. Athena decided to raise him secretly and hid him in a box. The goddess gave the box to the daughters of King Cecrops of Athens, and told them to keep the box shut. However, two of them, Aglaurus and Herse, curious to see what was inside, opened it and saw the infant Erichthonius wrapped around a snake. Driven in madness due to the sight, the two sisters along with the third, Pandrosus, fled and fell off the Acropolis to their deaths.

greekmythology.com

The surname “Aphis” is derived from “Apophis”, the Greek form of Egyptian “Apep”. Possibly meaning “to slither.” In mythology, Apep is the personification of evil, seen as a giant snake.

EARLY ENVIRONMENT CONCEPTS

STORYBOARD

My initial storyboard focused on a brief backstory for Erica based around the initial shockwave and “birth” of APATHENA, and from there followed the format of parallel action between a chase and an interrogation. The interrogation would take place within CERBERUS headquarters and the interrogation officer would ask Erica questions. The dialogue would act as a bridge between the interview in the present, and the events of the chase as they unfold. Erica is confronted by a CERBERUS officer who pursues her, ultimately she is caught and taken back to HQ. At this point she is recruited.

  • Open with longshot of location
  • Explosion detonates (Birth of APATHENA)
  • Wave hits island, both shockwave and massive tidal wave
  • See young Erika separated from Parents who die
  • CUT TO TITLE
  • Cut to close-up of Erika’s hand spray painting
  • Audio overlay of Interrogation room “Name?”
  • “Erika … “
  • SHOT/REVERSE SHOT of Erika’s spray painting actions and interrogation officer’s pen scribblings
  • “Age?”
  • “19.”
  • CU of Security camera scanning over to Erika and zooming its lens.
  • “Family?”
  • “None.” (Or silence followed by interrogator saying “No family”, “I’ll take that as a no” etc.)
  • “Hold it.”
  • “Shit.”
  • “Alright you’re coming with me.”
  • Erika doesn’t turn around.
  • Radio chatter, officer responds “Yeah just some street punk”. Erika grips her can in anger.
  • In the Interrogation room, interrogator says something that tees up for the action. Silhouette of pursuer behind.
  • Back in the alley pursuer grabs Erika’s arm, Erika squeezes the can tight and spins around.
  • Chase plays out vision of APATHENA catches Erika off guard and she falls.
  • Caught up by the pursuer, removes helmet, makes witty remark.
  • Erica is defeated and taken onboard the helicopter.
  • Atmospheric flying through city towards CERBERUS headquarters.
  • Find way to link back to interrogation room
  • Interrogator finishes by listing the offence, when she mentions the officer’s name show cut to her reacting with concern on her face.
  • Something along the lines of “since you have no family you will be sent to…”
  • Pursuer cuts in, “Wait…” she wants to take her under her wing, something along the lines of “I can see you’ve got spirit, and I think that shouldn’t go to waste. How about joining the team” or something.
  • Cut to Erika who concentrates for a moment before bursting out laughing… wait you’re serious?
  • END

The feedback I received at this point highlighted some major issues, these being clarity and workload. I was aware that this was an ambitious project, but had not fully considered how long it would take to produce. The main points were:

  • Think about minimizing design to manage workload (complexity of environments, length of animation, amount of action)
  • A lot of background information, surveillance, ai, hallucinations, how to convey this information. An animatic will prove the readability of the narrative.
  • Less things happening, more importance on what is happening.
  • Think about how to simplify and stylise the animation in a way that manages workload.
  • Use of camera and editing to frame animation in a way that reduces workload.
  • Consider framerate (2s, 4s, 7s etc) Potentially a stylised anime inspired look with exaggerated key poses and long holds, likely on 2s or 3s.

Based on this feedback and my own opinions I continued to develop the script with careful consideration for implications on workload. My major concerns were clarity and character. The parallel action was a useful way of condensing time, but ultimately it impacted readability. Secondly I felt that character motivations were not properly justified. Erica escalates the conflict unnecessarily to a point where her ultimate recruitment makes little sense. Erica should instead be saved by the CERBERUS officer when confronted with a different enemy, likely the religious zealots (cultists/Apathetics). The conflict was also somewhat arbitrary and served as a poor excuse for the chase. Some kind of MacGuffin would help to better orient the action and provide an explanation for each character’s involvement. I took all these ideas and feedback on board, made some new criteria for story and created my final story beats.

Key points

  • Simplification of both narrative and animation.
  • Must be able to describe through a single sentence.
  • Core premise or loop that complex elements can then be added to.
  • Better ways to integrate the separated elements of my world and narrative.

Problems highlighted

  • Story elements feel overly complex, disconnected and poorly explained.
  • Real world future setting and text exposition is unhelpful, a fictional setting means less explanation.
  • Erica “origin story” and 15 year gap are unnecessary.
  • Non-linear narrative and cross/cutting add extra confusion.
  • Escalation to chase is poorly motivated and is poor reflection of Erica’s character.
  • Conflict between Erica and officer is unnecessary and counter-productive.
  • Ghostly vision is unmotivated and only adds confusion.
  • Erica’s recruitment is poorly motivated and relies on lots of justification through dialogue.

Design Decisions

  • One line synopsis: Erica joins CERBERUS and fights cultists in a dystopian city.
  • To elaborate: APATHENA explodes (for reasons undisclosed), scattering artifacts across the city. Cultists want these for unknown reasons, CERBERUS are tracking them down and reclaiming them.
  • Erica’s deviant and bold character are communicated through petty theft of an artifact. Serves as a MacGuffin, easily identifiable object to motivate the plot. 
  • Introduces cultists (their motivation to collect these artifacts) a glimpse at the effects of the artifact on Erica and why she is drawn to it (through vision when Erica interacts with it) and the goal of CRBRS (to retrieve the artifacts).
  • Visual parallels between the APATHENA statue, the artifacts and the figure in Erica’s visions to link these elements.
  • Erica’s accidental involvement with cultists, newfound knowledge of the artifact and demonstration of abilities through theft, chase and fight are a much better explanation for her interrogation and subsequent recruitment.
  • A brief glimpse at some other recruits when escorted through CRBRS HQ will communicate that Erica is not an exception and will again better justify her recruitment.

Technical Decisions

  • Animating on 2s and 3s
  • Still scenes with minimal character animation (interview room, discovery of artifact, interaction with officer, transport back to CRBRS HQ and movement inside the building.
  • Character animation focus during chase and fight.
  • Continue to design characters and world while developing storyboard.
  • Character with a lot of movement should be relatively easy to redraw (Skin-tight clothing for CERBERUS officer, Cultists covered by cloaks with hidden faces, limbs obscured)
  • When moving through CRBRS HQ use elevators, escalators and travellators to allow for generally static and minimal character animation.

Plan

  • Core cast is finalised (Erica, Officer, Interviewer, 2 identical cultists)
  • Design core cast, complete character turnarounds and simplify where possible.
  • Environmental concepts in tandem with storyboard refinement so I know exactly what environments are necessary and how they need to be laid out.
  • Development of chase and fight scenes with particular attention to efficiency of animation through framing, camera movement, editing etc.
  • Finalised storyboard and dialogue, followed by animatic.

COLOUR PALETTE

CHARACTER DESIGN

CECLIA

When designing how the CERBERUS officer should look I wanted her to express confidence, strength but also a sense of humour, generally a big sister type. This would provide levity to the otherwise tense or action oriented chase scene, it would also provide an interesting dynamic against Erica’s stubbornness and attitude. Her design should therefore be a balance of fun and friendly, competence and professionalism. Her outfit should be a military uniform, skin tight and easy to animate.

Specific character inspiration comes from:

  • Tsunade – Naruto
  • Lin Beifong – The Legend of Korra
  • Misato Katsuragi – Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Jubilee – X Men

Ceclia’s design is intended to communicate her physical strength and agility. Her skin tight suit, hip pouch and jacket communicate military involvement. Her hair is tied back so as not to be in the way and she wears an earpiece for communication. The winged earpiece and shape of her goggles are modelled after a Greek Corinthian helmet.

ONETTE

The Interrogation officer needed to provide a personality that countered that of Ceclia. In order to provide some moral ambiguity as to CERBERUS’s motives. As an interrogation officer. Her design should convey her intelligence. She is a scientist and should be mature and authoritative but also somewhat patronising and cynical.

I wanted to make her affiliation to CERBERUS apparent as well as establishing a visual connection with Ceclia. Her glasses and coat communicate intelligence and authority. Her cigarette is intended to convey her cynicism. She is a much more serious and unfriendly looking character compared to Ceclia, with an aura of superiority.

Onette Final Design

CULTISTS

The cultists would feature heavily in the chase scene of my film, for this reason they needed to be both visually interesting and relatively easy to animate. Their identities would be hidden so I could avoid animating their faces by obscuring them with shadows or covering them with a mask or fabric. I was particularly inspired by the Equalists from The Legend of Korra and Batman’s design from Batman the Animated Series.

The design of the cultists is successful in obscuring their identity and communicating mystery, fear and intimidation. By covering the face and extremities of the cultists they will also be significantly easier to animate during the chase scene. The design of the mask is meant to be slightly uncanny, the hollow eyes are accentuated by the hands pulling at the lower eyelids. It looks sad and tired, combined with the lack of physical features and intimidating silhouette, I believe the cultist design is very effective.

CERBERUS LOGO DESIGN

Unsurprisingly Cerberus is a very popular name and logo online, with people finding creative ways of incorporating the 3 headed dog into the design.

I felt that a lot of these were quite busy, I instead wanted to focus on a minimalist design and play effectively with the negative space. These logos would primarily be featured on the jacket and coat of the Cerberus officers and therefore needed to be readable at a distance and when scaled down.

ANIMATIC

I took these new story beats and made a very rough storyboard, just to give me an idea of how the major beats would look before developing an animatic.

Here I completed a sound edit comparable to that of the final film (minus dialogue). I took this opportunity to gauge the reaction of my lecturers and friends. Thankfully almost all issues regarding clarity had been cleared up, there were still some issues regarding workload which I completely agreed with and proceeded to plan for.

I organised my shot list using a traffic light system:

  • Green – Essential
  • Amber – Preferable
  • Red – Luxury

Through cutting up my animatic I figured out which shots were essential to maintain continuity and therefore which were expendable, ranking based on importance. The difference between the longest and shortest versions of the film being 26 shots. Knowing I had contingency plans in place made me feel more confident about the feasibility of the project. Worst case scenario everything after the fight scene could be considered luxury as the resolution of the fight provides sufficient closure.

CHARACTER TURNAROUNDS

In order to guarantee that my characters were animatable and that I could understand their proportions in 360 degrees I completed a turnaround for each.

ERICA

CECLIA

ONETTE

CULTIST

ANIMATION TESTS

RUN CYCLE

Erica is the most complex of the core cast and is involved in almost every shot. As a lot of the film involves her running I wanted to make sure that animating these scenes was feasible. If the run cycle was good enough I could reuse it during production.

Different frame cycles communicate different things about the action and the character. This is also true for the posing. A shorter frame cycle will naturally communicate a faster run, but even a slower frame cycle can effectively communicate speed with proper timing and posing. A run also becomes more readable the more frames you allow. For this reason I took reference from the posing of the 6 frame stride and the timing of the 8 frame stride. From here I applied some subtle squash and stretch to sell the weight and force of the run. I also added some secondary animation in the form of Erica’s hair strands that help sell the movement. In the WIP version the hair movement is wrong, it gives the impression of elastic. This was corrected and now much better represents realistic hair movement.

EXPLOSION EFFECT

The organic nature of effects animation and the straight ahead animation approach required means that an effective result can only be found through experimentation. Using effects reference I limited myself to 4 tones, 2 for the fire and 2 for the following smoke. The speed of the animation sells the force of the explosion. Even though it is slightly messy, lecturer feedback suggested that this was beneficial and helped to sell the organic movement. Cleaning up effects too carefully can detract from the impact.

My Explosion Test