Roughing it out - Heart of Stone

I started animating some of the roughs for Heart of Stone. I took on scenes with elements I was comfortable with (things I could also specialise in) like effects animation, morphs and fire. I'm also responsible for the torch fire animation in this production as I have taken a liking to animating fire and everyone loves fire in their stories.

These roughs took me a few weeks to get done, since we're doing the rough and tie-down stage together they require a bit more detail than a regular rough:

I also experimented with fx styles, trying to tie in that greek vase style to the animation:

Some patterns that inspired this, the waves informed the water fx and the zigzags informed the impact fx

We chose style 2 for its balance between style and clarity.

What went well:

• Using style inspiration/reference for the effects helped make it feel more authentic,
• Basing the character animation around the singing ("yoouuu'll do so we right here dear!") brought a lot of performance into the animation,
• A lot of my scenes involve shadows/silhouette, so I developed an eye for silhouette clarity and form.

What could be improved:

• I still have one more scene to rough out, this delay could be because of the workload I'm taking on, or because of the influence of the coronavirus pandemic, I think it's a bit of both. 

Update:

I managed to finish the last rough scene I was responsible for fairly quickly, since I've already animated a lot of shadows and silhouettes for this film!