CALLING
TRAILER
TRAILER
Pre-production on this project was probably the quickest one I executed yet, nonetheless a lot of attention and careful decision making took place.
CHARACTER DESIGN
For the stylization of the characters, I chose a simplification of my housestyle since I was going to be the lead animator on this project and work efficiency was of importance.
For the clothing and color I mostly used the festive interpretation of the indigenous Sami found in Northern Europe.
The visualisation of STARBOY, one of the main characters of CALLING, was outsourced by my talented friend Eef van Wershoven (@Sunny_eve). Her specialization in fantasy characters seemed like a fitting match for designing this magical being.
LAY-OUT
In order to coordinate well with Eef van Wershoven, the (exterior) background designer for this project, I’d made some lay-outs of the house and the surrounding areas. I went a bit more in detail with the interior designs to get a good dimensional impression of the setting. It also helped me launch quicker into the interior background illustrations.
ANIMATIC
There was no storyboard for this project, only a simplified animatic.
*The worktitel used to be different in the beginning.
The animation of the production phase was quite cathartic (except for the FX animation). For a lot of the shots, I only used sketched keys as a base before heading straight to the cleaning phase for optimal efficiency.
I used color and shading keys made by EEF VAN WERSHOVEN. The backgrounds were specifically ordered in many layers in order for me to create a parallax effect in compositing, depth and to add FX layers in between.
sketch
clean-pass
color & highlight
FX
compositing
INTERIOR BACKGROUNDS
The interior and exterior of the house were managed by me. To have the interior matching with the character designs, I chose for subtle warped perspectives that bend the room. It makes the room feel smaller and cluttered as well. The colors were based on the atmospheric impression and thumbnail color keys developed by EEF VAN WERSHOVEN.