Ideation
Without the help of the word cloud, my group was having trouble ideating a unique story idea to animate. So, we decided that we would each choose a word from the given word cloud and try to weave a story out of those words. We ended up with the words space, dolphins, light, shadow and diamond. After a few iterations, we ended up with our final story:
Two groups of dolphins, Lights and Shadows, exist unbeknownst to each other in space. The Light Dolphins were representative of constant ecstasy and the Shadow Dolphins were representative of sadness. The inciting incident, their discovery of a diamond, sparks them to have an interest in each other. Their curiosity leads them to discover that, due to the presence of the magic diamond, allows them to combine to form a more balanced species of dolphins.
Our story revolved around the idea that too much happiness or sadness could be detrimental to someone. We drew inspiration from the concept of the ring and yang, and even tried to incorporate this imagery into our final work.
Pre-Production
Our storyboard went through several changes throughout pre-production. My first goal was to incorporate as many unique compositions as possible into the animation in order to achieve an interesting film, as well as frame the best shot for each scene.
After the first pitch, we received feedback that the spatial orientation in the film may have been too confusing. We then tried to establish clear transitions between shots and incorporated the 180° rule. We also cut back on some necessary shots in order to keep our film within the 20 second limit.
As we relied heavily on mannerisms, colour and expressions to convey the personalities of the dolphins character design was a crucial part of our process.
My teammate, Georgia, made a character sheet that we could all work from. Although we did make some changes to the style and colours, we followed this throughout the animation. I feel like having this sheet allowed us to maintain a consistent style between people’s animations.
We made mood boards for each element of our animation, including characters, background, cinematography etc.
It is interesting to reflect back on these mood boards, which were made months ago. I can see how our vision changed and evolved into its own identity over the process of production and post product. While we still drew inspiration from all of these mood boards, they were more of a starting point which we then developed.
With what we had so far, we made an animatic to play around with timing, and to see if our storyboard worked well in video.
With the feedback of Izzy and Jess, we realised that the spatial orientation at the beginning was still disconnected between shots. So, we decided to keep the camera fixed at the beginning, only changing the camera angle when the Shadow Dolphins entered the scene.
Production
I mainly worked on the 3D elements and the background. While backgrounds usually help the audience keep track of where the camera is facing, it was difficult to design in this case. Since the entire film was set in space, most of the background remained plain. However, I wanted to give some structure to the space by adding piece of space rocks and space craft. In doing so, I hopefully gave an explanation of how the diamond got where it was—through a space wreck—without taking away from the main story.
I found it difficult to model broken pieces at first—they always looked flat and manufactured. So, I decided to sketch out some examples to then refer to in order to make dynamic designs. I mainly worked by drawing parts of spaceships from movies and shows, and then “breaking” them into pieces.
Some objects created through this method
Using an image plane to fill in the background was a decision made pretty late in the process. I would have liked to experiment with different styles in the background rather than using a stock photograph. This may be something I revisit in the near future.
Sound Design
One of our inspirations for the sound design and the overall mood was the 90s video game Ecco the Dolphin:
We decided that our sound would reflect late 80s-90s video game music, with an eclectic mix of whale sounds and ambient music.
We added some sounds, albeit minimal, that adhered to what was happening on the screen. In hindsight, I would have liked to experiment more with sounds, including dolphin noises, bubbles and a more exciting bling for the transition.
Stenellar
The title of our film, Stenellar, is a play on the words stellar and stenella, which is the scientific name for a certain kind of dolphin.