Design for Media: Unity of Elements

This time the objective is to develop a progressive series of designs. Each panel uses the same design elements as the one before it, plus an additional element, to create an entirely new design. The images and composition of each panel are suggested by the word, "mystery."


The first panel is designed after German expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary. The not-quite-in-focus image, the ambiguous periphery, the ochre tint, and the slightly blown out highs and lows are all designed to look like a tinted silent film, circa 1920. The statue appears to be transparent, as if made by a double-exposure on a hand cranked camera.


The second panel adds a decorative element. The color scheme mimics Bogart-era black and white sound films. There is a hint of blue, so the image is not entirely without chroma.


Panel three gets its palette from early two-color films from the mid-to-late 1920s. It's surprising how much of the spectrum you can get with just red and green. Even so, the image still has reduced chroma when compared to the real world. Some areas in the image have almost no chroma at all.


Panel four has an exaggerated range of chomatic intensity. This is designed to look like three-color film stock that was "pushed" during processing. This sort of color manipulation has been used to create sustained emotional tension in movies. Examples include Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976).


Neo-noir films tend to cool skin tones. Sometimes the entire environment also leans toward the cool side of the spectrum, in which case colors also tend to be desaturated (as in Blade Runner, 1982). Other times, cooled skin tones are set against warm environments for contrast, and colors are more saturated (as in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, 1986).

Panel five uses a selective, chromatically rich palette to set cool figures against a warm ground. Since warm colors tend to move forward and cool colors tend to recede, this has the effect of flattening the apparent space and creating visual tension. That which should be in the back wants to come to the front, and vice versa.


And here are all five panels arranged as a unit; a sort of abbreviated history of color in film noir, old and new.

Animation with Dialogue

EDIT: I have removed this video clip because of non-libre content (music) that is legally permissible under fair use, but conflicts with my Creative Commons license. You can view the clip here.

Haley speaks!

See the full animatic (well, at least the first half, which is the only part that's done so far) right here.

Walk Cycle

A basic walk cycle, made pretty much step-by-step from Richard Williams' book. 16 drawings, shot on twos. Instead of having the entire figure rise and fall with each step, I tried making the robot's major parts move independently of each other. The body lags slightly behing the legs, the head behind the body, and the antenna lags behind the head in the cycle.

Design for Media: Shape & Character Development

The objective of this series is to arrange a family of compound shapes, all with similar characteristics, in ways that explore spatial relationships relative to each other and to their frame of reference. The shapes have both geometric and organic qualities (some favoring one of these two attributes, some favoring the other). The series involves both flat, abstracted images, and designs that appear to suggest concrete, dimensional space.

The design of the first panel is suggested by the adjective, "dynamic." The form suggests strong linear motion, accented by a curved line that crosscuts the primary direction of movement. This design, by no accident, resembles a caped superhero in flight; but this is the only panel in the series where a single shape by itself will appear to be something recognizable.

The second panel takes several derivative shapes and arranges them as an abstract design. The space is flat, yet some shapes appear to upstage others. Are the white forms positive and the black forms negative, or is it the other way around? Do the shapes break the elliptical frame of reference, or stop just short of it? Look closely.

Now the amoeboid shapes begin coming together to resemble a real-world object -- not individually, as in the first panel, but as an aggregate. A little color is added (every shape has exactly the same hue). The perceived volume and depth are enhanced by the combination of value and chromatic intensity.

Panel 4 is on the way...

Cyclical Metamorphosis

The assignment was to create a morph cycle that moved through three objects of our choosing, and then returned to the first frame.

Yes, it was tempting to draw a Transformer. Blitzwing would have been cool. But I decided to pick three real-world objects instead.

Morphing from the minivan to the computer was relatively easy to work out, since they're both durable and geometric. It was harder to work out the transitions between the rabbit's organic shape and the other two forms.

Edit: My dad and I exchanged e-mails, wondering what our transforming bunny would be named. We finally settled on Grimhop. "Me Grimhop should be leader, not that wimpy Cottontail Prime."