Chelsea Butler

Premise has been a bit of a difficult experience for me as an artist and student. While I am pleased that I have been able to create a story and design the appearance of the setting and characters, I am ultimately a little disappointed in myself for not being able to push myself further. As my Premise is a continuation from my Character Design project, I feel that I have let myself down for not having more work to show for the time that I have had to complete it. There are so many skills that I need to develop in order for me to consider myself a working professional and the sense of imposter syndrome has been lurking in the back of my mind all this time. My biggest concern is that I will be incapable of producing a good story an animation at the end of my third year, and that I don't have the mindset of a creative professional. That being said, I do believe that there is still hope for my project yet. I think I have a good foundation for creating a beautiful story of romance and m...

The Art Of Love & Beyond:   The Crit Presentation for Love & Beyond:   The Animatic for Love & Beyond:  

Here is the animatic for my animation, Love and Beyond. I wanted to create an emotional piece and emphasise the connection between the characters. So instead of the characters speaking to each other, the main focus would be on their facial expressions and body language. To further amplify the emotion, I also plan to hire a composer to create a piece of music for my final animation. I have used soft piano music in the animatic, and I want to portray a similar feel to this piece from Pixar's "Up":

Here are the prop designs that I plan on using within my animation. These are based off what I included in my storyboards, but I feel that they could change throughout the project. The most crucial props are the bench and the photograph. I came up with two versions of the photograph, one normal and one wedding photograph. I haven’t fully decided on what one to use yet, but the main thing is for the photograph to portray their relationship with each other. 

After having a discussion with Alan, we both felt that there was more that could be added to the storyboard in terms of emotional variation. In this version, I have added in extra scenes such as Linette and René’s initial meeting to better establish the relationship they have. I’m still figuring out the in-universe physics, but I feel that this version feels a little more resolved.

Here I have drawn a few different facial expressions to show how René and Linette will potentially look when showing their emotions.

Here are the turnarounds for my characters, René and Linette. I decided to go for the more cartoon-y style as I feel it looks more appealing. I also wanted to keep their costumes simple so that it doesn’t become too complicated when it comes to modelling these.

After a previous discussion with my tutor Alan, I decided to revisit my storyboard and alter the animation sequence and setting. Rather than having the characters traverse Paris, it would be better to just have them interact in one environment, which will be a park bench with a view of the Eiffel Tower behind it. In terms of character interaction, I wanted to make it a bit more playful. Since Linette is a ghost, she may want to use the fact that René can’t see her to her advantage and have some fun. I feel like this would also accentuate her quirky personality, but also imply a sense of familiarity with the two, as if this meeting isn’t the first. 

Love and Beyond OGR by Chelsea Butler on Scribd

As I did with my other character, René, I wanted to do a bit of exploration for my other character, Linette. Below are some mood boards that I put together to help me figure out her design. Much like the celebrity references, I wanted Linette to have a rounded face and a kind smile. She is the type of person who is strong and will fight for what she believes in. I have once again decided to create two types of designs, one more cartoon-y and the other a little more realistic. Linette's main features include her rounded face, her smile, her long swooping nose and her wavy, middle-parted brunette hair. As she is going to become a ghost in my story, I have also added in some designs of her "spirit form" where she is predominantly one colour and translucent.  I gave her a variety of outfit designs where I tried to reflect the fashion of the 1920s to see what she could look like. With her ghostly form, I am unsure whether to have her in a lo...

For my Premise project, I wanted to push myself in terms of the character designs. As this story is based on my previous character project, I wanted to develop the style a bit more to suit the romantic atmosphere. I'm starting this design exploration with my character, René, the male lead for my animation. I put together some mood boards for his appearance to get an idea of how he could look. My tutor, Alan, suggested I collect some images of celebrities that I could use as reference and inspiration for his looks. I wanted René to have a soft and kind face, but still quite chiselled to match his aristocratic background. I also wanted to figure out what kind of clothes he would wear, so I sketched some outfit variations, keeping in mind that because he is from an aristocratic family, he would be well dressed in smart suits. I also created some quick colour variations, keeping the palette neutral to represent the era that I'm basing the story in, 1920s France. ...

For my Premise project, I decided to create an initial storyboard to help me visualise how the animation could potentially unfold. My main focus in this storyboard is to keep the camera close to the character’s faces to evoke a lot of emotion through their expressions and body language. The beginning of the storyboard shows the male character, René, seeing flashbacks of himself and his love, Linette, spending time together, so I need to now consider how I will portray these memories through either editing or the actual animation. Another thing that I need to consider is how to texture the 3D model for Linette when she becomes a ghost. The idea is that she will be slightly transparent but not to the point where she will be hard to distinguish. I am now currently considering how I can push the characters designs even further and also incorporate the Art Nouveau style in to the final animation.

For my animation, I’ve decided to create some rough storyboards so I can get down what I think the opening scene would look like. The idea was to show René looking at the Eiffel Tower, grieving the loss of his love Linette, and as he looks around the park, he sees flashbacks of times that they spent together. This is so that I can introduce the relationship between the characters without making the film too long. I feel that I might struggle with this a little as there is a lot of ideas that I want to include, but I don’t want to make it too lengthy. I am going to continue roughing out how I think the scenes will play out.

After speaking with my tutors, Alan and Justin, it was discussed that for this project I could do a continuation of my Character Design project. I really enjoyed this idea as I had a lot of fun with my Character project and wanted to develop it further. To begin with, I quickly made some influence maps to remind myself of where I want to go with this animation. I was advised to look at Disney’s Paperman (2012) in regards to animation style. I also want to incorporate the Art Nouveau style as well, so it will be interesting to see how that will translate in to 3D animation. I also added in some images from Disney’s Enchanted (2007) as I liked the colours and art style in the animated segments of the film. In regards to the story of my animation, it will be a romantic piece set in 1920’s Paris, France. It’s about two lovers of different social status who meet and fall in love, but one of them meets a tragic fate and passes away. The animation will be about how they ov...

After speaking with Alan and Justin in regards to the Premise project, I’ve come to the realisation that I wanted to make my project character based, as I would like to see myself as a Character Designer, or Character Design Artist, after graduation.  I initially had an idea, relating to something personal for me, about someone being chased by a monster but then making peace with it. I’m not completely set on this idea as of yet, however I’m having a little difficulty coming up with something that’s not too generic.  I was advised to look at my surroundings in my day-to-day life, and take what I see as some inspiration for my project, perhaps create sentences and keywords that I could refer to. Another approach mentioned was to ask myself a ‘what if’ question and play on the ideas. The other day, as I was taking a walk, I saw some kids in my local park playing pretend together. It got me thinking of how I used to play pretend with my toys. I would dream up a world...