Kristy Teo - SUNBOUND

Video to be updated with polished sound sometime in summer:

Here is our behind-the-scenes video covering all our processes and reflections for this project. Our team set out to make an animatic that showcases our technical skills, as well as to learn the full real-time render pipeline.

My role on the team was to lead the art direction and keep up with production goals and timelines. Below I will talk about the parts that I worked on 𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯 :

Storyboarding & Animation

Here is a breakdown on the scenes I worked on for this animation:

Here are the BTS I worked on for this animation:

The initial plan for our animatic was to have an escape sequence and a flying sequence. However due to time constraints, our producer decided to cut the flying sequence. Here was the animatic that was cut:

We then tested the climbing animation with Miles Morales while our Amyr rig was still in production:

As an animator, I was in-charge of the pipe animation sequence. Here is the first 2D look, inspired by the quirky lens uses by the watchdogs 2 trailer:

As the Storyboard was moving along faster than the character designs, I started on the colour script early to give the team an idea for the art direction of our film (although it was later not followed due to producer's request):

Art Direction

Here is the initial creative brief I made and sent to the team for concept art and development:

General Art Direction:

The thematic function of both art movements will be used conjunctionally to portray the different dimensions of our setting. The Futurist influences in your design should be used to portray oppression, technology and authority. The Art Deco influences in your design should be used to portray history, opulence and touches of humanity.

I highly recommend you guys to look for real life classical arts, architecture and design for references beyond just looking at other artist’s rendition of these movements.

Futurist + Art Deco - geometrical but classy.

Also look into the function of how these movements emerged and shaped society (irl):

Futurism - A movement that sprung from the glorification of the Industrial Revolution, with the core idea of discarding the past to rush towards the future. emphasises the dynamism, efficiency, youthfulness and violence of machinery.

Art Deco - A movement right before WW2. An expressed admiration for the modernity of the machine and for the inherent design qualities of machine-made objects. Inspired by the wave of modernism from art nouveau, de stijl, bauhaus and cubism, it is differentiated by its inspiration from Egyptian and American Indian elements.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni (1913)

La Città Nuova by Antonio Sant’Elia

The Music by Luigi Russolo

Chrysler Building

Battlesea Powerstation, London

Environment:

Historical city long past its prime but still in denial. It has a clear social class and is surveilled by robots and drones that add to an overly oppressive atmosphere. There is an attempt to mask oppression with opulence.

Some general ideas in mind:
- It would be good to layer different materials with another layer of texturing. (gold for art deco, plastic for futurist, metal for industrial revolution etc)

- Some lighting props that we can use will be good too, so that we have more to play with for colour grading

- An easy shortcut is to add art deco prints since it's just copy paste. Can ask graphic designers if yall dk how to create art deco prints for fabric.

- Ask graphic designers if you need them to design some posters or signs. Do specify what kind these will be (election posters, movie adverts, etc) and how many. References will be good too.

Guideline for deliverables needed for proposal:
X1 env moodboard
X1 additional references slide (optional if you need to explain in detail any cool stuff)
Some building concept sketches
Some prop concept sketches
Material shader list (just internet images, would be nice but optional)
1 concept art

Characters:

Let’s differentiate the main character from the robots using the thematic classification from the art direction:

Main Character - 80% art deco, 20% futurism > Representing history and spirit humanity. I would like for the character designer to also add elements of freedom into the boy that we can reuse thematically throughout the story (e.g. birds, insects, broken chains etc).

Give it a culture, a face and a personality.

Drones - 80% futurism, 20% art deco > Representing technology and misuse of power. It would be good to design it to mirror the symbol of freedom from the main character as an evil version or as a predator.

Robots - 80% futurism, 20% art deco > Representing the absence of humanity. It would be good to have some design parallels to the main character but not necessary since they’re just mobs.

Guideline for deliverables needed for proposal:
X2 character moodboard (one for main, one for robots/drones)
X1 additional references slide (optional if you need to explain in detail any cool stuff)
Concept sketches for all characters
Character sheet for Main character ( i need a character prop for flying too)
Character sheet for Drone

Here is the first updated look and references:

Environment Alleyway Initial Concepts and references:

We decided for the environment's colours to mirror the growing hope that our character feels as he moves towards freedom and the sun. In that way, we decided to catergorise the colours as such:

Red = Dawn/ Sun/ Hope
Green = Degradation / Oppression

Recognising that some of us did not pay attention to art history in year 1 (lol), i did a mini-activity for our environment team to try and cramp as much of the relevant art movements:

I'm not really sure it worked tho...

Amyr Initial Concepts and references:

We also chose to represent Amyr as an androgenous 14 y/o impoverished boy inventor, that due to his inquisitive nature, wants to explore the outside world.

Taking inspiration from the origins of art deco being inspired by Egyptian art, I worked with the character artist for Amyr to figure out our thematic look. We decided on the scarab, with his backpack being beetle wings that unfold for him to glide into the sun.

Drone Initial Concepts:

With the themes of Amyr completed, we decided that the drone should represent a predator of a scarab, which was a bird. We played around the idea of using a biblically-accurate angel as silhouette inspiration, however due to external reasons, our drone concept artist could not complete the vision.

despite the challenges, we still managed to churn out a complete drone design, which i think we should be thankful for.

Reflections:

I think the main challenge with working with so many concept artists is that we did not share the same art vocabulary. For example, art movements like "Modernist" and "Art Deco" was not universally understood by the team. I take this as a learning opportunity and understand that not every artist may be interested in art theory, and that i should "double-confirm-plus-chop" on everyone's understanding of the objective, especially with a team as production-focused as this one. Moreover, there wasn't an effort to reinforce the concepts after the first milestone due to having to juggle other hats.

Environment Prop Modelling

PRODUCED BY: ATE TEAM
PRODUCER: SHAO WEI (JASON)
DIRECTOR: KRISTY (ME)

ENVIRONMENT TEAM: SHAO WEI, SAMUEL, ERNEST
ANIMATION TEAM: SEAN, CHEW YUAN, KRISTY
CHARACTER TEAM: SI LING, VAIEN

SPECIAL THANKS TO: FIN TEO (OUR LECTURER), KRIS KRIKPATRIK (GUEST)

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by Umberto Boccioni (1913)

La Città Nuova by Antonio Sant’Elia

The Music by Luigi Russolo

Chrysler Building

Battlesea Powerstation, London

You may also like