Telling Tales: Week 3 - Visual Development

Moodboard for Character

Found a book about native american myths and folklore, and patch up a quick moodboard, and chose the colours that fits for the characters. Totsi's colour palette is taken from the meaning of her name, moccassin which is the rattan shoes that native american people wear, and kachina dolls.

Meanwhile, I pick some of the colours from the totem pole for the Shaman because the totem carvings are symbollic to the sacred beasts that the Native American people worship, such that the colour choices represents other-worldliness, supernatural power and wisdom. The background's colour pallete will be the same as the shaman's simply to indicate that he owns the place. The spirits that comes out will be that of Totsi's.

Medium

Dan and I had a discussion about the medium that we are supposed to use for the animation. We decided to go for the idea of mixing paint on glass animation and 3D animation, and also about painting traditionally the UV texture on the sculpted CGI model to achieve a more natural aesthetic in the final piece.

Other than that, I have tried a bit of oil pastel to get some different mark making style, such as the rough textures from chalk drawings and colour blending which I am not really good at.

Pros of Oil Pastel: childhood nostalgia, getting familliar with the medium.
Cons of Oil Pastel: limited colour choice, and can't mix colours like when using paints.

I decided not to use them, but will try acrylic painted backgrounds and UVs for the CGI models.

Background Design

I made a compilation of pictures of the interiors of the teepee since I am not sure of how big it actually is.They are mostly rare photos and some traditional native american paintings that I find on the Internet. Going through this visual research has helped me to understand the size of regular teepees better. There is actually not much space to move around as i thought it would be inside a teepee. Having a small space could mean a good thing for the animation as it takes less time for Totsi to dash to the middle of the teepee from the entrance than what I expected.


A detailed illustration of floor plan that I came up with, showing the interior and placement of props inside the Shaman's teepee. I was inspired to make a floor plan as I was reading Hans Bacher's book titled Dream Worlds, in which he explains the importance of planning out the set and having a space that facilitate characters for their actions.

Some sketches to explore possible placement of the characters and the props in the background.