#and224

As part of our advanced vfx and motion graphics module, we were required to make an animation of our choice, for example an ident or a music video. My choice was to make a music video following an idea I'd had in my head for a while. To start with, I set out with designing my protagonist. The world in which they fit is post-apocalyptic; they are the sole survivor of a catastrophe that wiped out everybody else in their city, hence the name "Ghost Town." Said character is left warring with a mixture of feelings, personified by two spirits that haunt them - one (blue, to signify calm and melancholy) represents their relief to still be alive and their belief that those they used to know would be glad they survived, while the other (red, to signify anger) represents their guilt at being a lone survivor and what they believe many would think of them being the only one left (why them? Why should they be allowed to keep on living? Why nobody else? It doesn't seem fair). The video centres around them trying to flee the spirits as they run through the city but being ultimately unable to escape them, instead having to accept that while both may be true, what happened is not their fault and they just have to keep trying to live on regardless of what life throws at them. As I'd had this idea in my head for some time, I already had a vague idea of what I wanted the character to look like, so I did a handful of brief sketches to help clarify my thoughts. I eventually decided on the top right design and elaborated further on the bottom right - I liked the silhouette and figured the longer hair would allow for some fun motion to be added to the animation. I liked the idea of over-ear headphones as this is something I wear when commuting to and from places, so I thought it could be a good accessory to add that also fit the aesthetics of the rest of the video. The rest of their outfit is designed to be easy to animate while leaving some room for fabric movement (for example sleeves) and I also opted to use a mask, both to save time on animating the face as well as potentially signifying the character hiding from something, shown by hiding a large part of their identifiable appearance. The idea of a jacket was considered briefly as shown below, and while I would've liked to keep this I doubted I'd be able to animate it well enough with the amount of movement planned for the character.

While I also had some ideas for the ghosts, I was less sure about the ghost figures, so I drew up some designs for them as well. I wanted them to be flowy and smoothly animated, and floated the idea of animating them at a higher framerate to everything else to emphasise the feeling of a supernatural presence that doesn't quite fit the world around them.

With those ideas in mind, I pulled together a storyboard set to music ("Ghost Town" by Trickle), which was then shown to peers. This allowed me to build on my ideas more and made sure I put enough thought into the reasons behind the character design as well as the other design elements throughout the video, such as what the ghosts are, making sure the video is cohesive with itself, etc.

The next step was to start making an animatic, however this is where I started to struggle. Due to severe and debillitating migraines, I was missing classes often and started being unable to keep up. The animatic remained unfinished because of this, substituting in storyboard frames where necessary, however what I did manage to get done allowed me to play around with composition and movement. I was able to consider how the ghost characters moved and how I could test my knowledge of animation with that. I was also able to think about designing unique transitions between scenes. Alongside this, feedback from teachers pushed me to use basic 3D for backgrounds to sketch over in order to help with perspective and pulling things together faster than normal. Because this was unfinished in time for our industry review, I had to show what I had. By the time of the review, I was able to show a finished background, a polished gif and a mock-up of what other frames could look like when finished.

Through this, I was able to experiment with the colours I wanted to use in my animation. With red and blue being the main two, I wanted to keep things somewhat harmonious for aesthetic purposes, so I opted to keep to shades of purple, a mix of the two. This allowed other colours to stand out (such as the yellow for contrasting lights, or the character herself) whilst also being appealing to look at. I was also able to familiarise myself with backgrounds more, as it's something I'm less experienced with.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get any further with this project. Due to health reasons, my deadline was extended via EC, however I was also unable to have everything finished for the extension due to debillitating mental health struggles as well as having difficulty balancing work from two semesters at once.