Frankenstein Lives project
“We wanted to simply tell a dramatic story —— But on a deeper level, we are also trying to create a new and appealing social culture, like Pandora’s Planet.
“Through this simple story, the audience can glimpse a part of this overhead world.”
Yuqi Xie (team member)
The beginning of a big project is often full of twists and turns, and the beginning of this Frankenstein project was no exception. Almost as soon as the briefing was over, I reached out to two of my teammates, Sarah and Yuqi, to discuss our collaboration.
Yuqi contributed a lot of whimsical and socially relevant topics to the initial ideas, Sarah’s ideas were more anti-utopian and futuristic. For my part, I’d like to build on my summer project and continue to develop a fantasy story set in modern times.
Although all three of us had different ideas, and we had many arguments in the process, the end result was undoubtedly a good one: we worked together to come up with a theme that we could all relate to. At the same time, the process of arguing with two teammates whose ideas and positions are very different from mine gave me valuable insights.
Our team’s exchange of ideas resulted in a vote for Sarah’s idea for the outline of our story (the vote was 3:0:0). However, her story could have been very different in its initial stages. We decided on keywords such as “body modification”, “circus”, “freak show”, etc., and then the detailed story developed on these keywords according to the references we found. The details of the story evolved from there, based on the references we found.
This time we also used Pinterest to collect material from various artists as reference, and we also created a common group on this platform to share the results of our collection with each other.
This brings me to a topic that I would like to focus on in this reflective writing: standardising the management workflow.
At this stage, we had roughly defined the framework of the story. While Yuqi was drawing the exquisite character designs, I started 3D modelling the backgrounds and scenes using MAYA and Blender, which was one of the main tasks I undertook in the early stages.
This time we finally decided to use completely 2D graphics, and a 3D model can certainly be a great aid to the original drawing.This was my first attempt at modelling at the behest of a teammate, and I think of it as an experience akin to being commissioned for a job: I needed to build the scene as another creator wanted it in her head. During this process, I learnt the importance of teamwork and communication; initially we took the form of online working sessions, but later realised that this was not a productive way of working.
Although I have been modelling with MAYA and Blender for a long time, I think I still have a lot of things that I can continue to improve as well as shortcomings.
For example, in the process of building the “Circus Stage”, I tried to use the “Fabric” material, which I have never done before, to enhance the realism of the stage, and I also used different shades of light and camera movement around the centre of the stage to try to make the stage more realistic. I also used different colours of light and camera movement around the centre of the stage to try and achieve the effect my team mates were looking for. The “lines” on the model on the left were also an experiment to help define the lines more clearly when drawing in 2D.
The second scene, the operating theatre, that we initially settled on for our story, also continues to be initially 3D modelled by me for reference. In this scene, I put more effort and experimented with more complex effects, such as the brick floor material on the ground, the water stain material, the creation of wall stains, the material representation of smooth and rusty metal, and so on. At the same time, the red-green contrasting lighting effect was also confirmed at this stage, and was slightly changed to orange and blue contrast in the following.
However, I must also reflect on the fact that I also made the mistake of being too obsessed with building a detailed model of the scene at this stage, while ignoring the feasibility of converting it into a 2D hand-painted scene. In fact, because the model was too complicated to build, we subsequently deleted many unnecessary objects to achieve the effect of simplifying the scene and highlighting the key characters.
At this stage, I was responsible for some of the action drawing as well as the vast majority of the outlining. Frankly, it’s a bit of a boring job, but I think it’s also an important one, because a good clean up can make the overall quality of the picture much better.
It was also at this stage that I confirmed with Yuqi, who was in charge of colouring, that we would use the same software for colouring, which saved us a lot of hassle of switching file types and rearranging the order of the animations when we were using different software, and made our work much more efficient.
This next stage was the most important part of this project that I put the most effort into, as well as being responsible for. After the outlining of the lines, the colouring of the base was done by Yuqi. After that, I was in charge of adding light and shadow effects and other special effects.
How can the inherent colours of the character design be better integrated into the scene and environment? Thinking about this question, I tried different layers, filters, and masks to make the character blend in with the scene more appropriately, and to minimise the sense of dissonance and fragmentation. While applying what I have learnt in the past courses, I have also tried to find tutorials and references from other artists on YouTube and other online platforms to create a sense of ambience that best suits our work.
After the lighting effects were completed, I was also responsible for the final camera work, editing and overall effects. I mainly use Adobe After Effects for this stage. Specifically, I need to create some shots that need to be shaped, and I also need to create some special background effects for the movement to make the characters fit better with the picture. And the flickering effect similar to that of old films was also created in this stage using After Effects for overall editing.
If my team mate’s job was to “shape” the animation, my job at this stage was to make it look amazing. During this process, I also looked for references from various platforms to help make our animation look better.
After months of hard work, our group finally managed to work our way through this one. Overall, it was an exhilarating and unforgettably brave endeavour, and I would even describe it as “adventurous”. I would even describe it as “risky”. After all, at the beginning, we never imagined that we would be able to produce a work of this calibre in terms of volume and finish.
Even though the project is now complete, there are so many areas for reflection and self-criticism. I think there are two main points.
Firstly, when deciding on the script in the early stages, our brainstorming sessions did not fully take into account the length of time our project would be allowed to produce and the length of the work cycle. This resulted in us producing a full story that was far more than what could be shown in just one minute of animation, and even more impossible to produce in the limited time available. As a result, we subsequently had to cut and alter a number of shots, including some that we had agreed were essential, in order to present our work within the project’s allotted timeframe. The obvious consequence of this was that our story and footage jumped around and fragmented, making it difficult for first-time viewers to catch all the messages we wanted to convey. Therefore, I think it’s important to take into account the time constraints in the early stages of a project.
Secondly, during the working period, we did not follow the timetable and work assignments strictly to execute our respective plans, and there was a lack of timely and necessary communication. This led to confusion in the post-production process, for example, when we realised that there was missing footage in the editing stage and had to make urgent changes. Similarly, we wasted a lot of time in the post-production phase integrating different work files because we didn’t standardise the software and file formats we used for our work in the early stages.
Of course, apart from these minor problems, I am still very satisfied with this project and find it very rewarding and meaningful. Once again, I would like to thank my teammates, Yuqi and Sarah, without your hard work and co-operation, we would not have been able to complete this project. Thank you again!