When it came to making a memorable and pleasing to watch documentary it was easy for me to find great inspiration. Having grown up watching shows such as The Ricky Gervais Show and Creature Comforts, I’ve already been exposed to two different types of interview animation.
When interviewing my grandfather for the film I wanted to produce about his time in the navy and the Royal Engineers, it was vital for me to remember his expressions as he talked, and so I recorded the whole interview with a camera and not just a microphone so that I could replicate some of his expressions in my animation as the story itself was told.
If you are trying to replicate a story narrated by an interview in animation it’s important to detach the interview and the story in certain ways so that the viewer can tell what is part of the story and what is part of the interview. To distinguish between the two, I decided to keep a blue colour scheme for the design of the animated story about the navy.
Limiting the story elements of the animation to a mainly blue colour scheme and the interview parts of it mostly yellow/orange gives a striking back and forth visually that sticks with the viewer and allows them to create a mental bridge between them. As well as this, it just keeps people from getting confused.
I wanted to keep a semi-realistic feel to my animation and so while it may not be incredibly detailed, I put a lot of effort into the lighting and hair in the animation. I decided that while I enjoyed the simple nature and design of the likes of The Ricky Gervais Show, I also liked how complex interview animation can be. For example, The Midnight Gospel delves into incredible animation to tell mind bending stories told over a podcast.
In hindsight, I probably should have gone for the simpler design along the lines of the style of The Ricky Gervais show. It would have given me a lot more time and I would have had to focus a lot less time and effort on each frame. I think animating both complex movement and colour as an individual animator is a challenge best tackled with a bigger time frame and also a more experienced individual. I think overestimating my own ability to pump out a great deal of work consistently maybe contributed negatively to the overall outcome and I think I should in the future bring my experience into account when thinking about planning an ambitious project.
As well as this, I decided to use my iPad to illustrate some of this project, and it worked incredibly well. I think moving forward it may be a key part of the way I animate in the near future. It helps me to create nice smooth lines with a high quality pen that makes me feel much more comfortable drawing.
I believe that in the future when animating the sea I may use a brush that emulates the flow of a paint brush more. I think it creates a more authentic water look and when animated makes a scene really pop and stand out. Because I used quite flat colours, there isn’t as much life as there could be on the screen.
Furthermore, I think my choice for the interviewee was a good one. My grandfather is a great story teller and has a lot of stories to tell from his many years in the navy. His Birmingham accent only adds to the positives of choosing him for my interview. However, I think perhaps next time I could include more than one interviewee, to get multiple angles of one story perhaps.
COVID-19 has had such a profound effect on everyone and it certainly made a big impact on this film. I planned on interviewing my grandfather in January, but due to COVID, I didn’t see him until April. This instantly left me for three months without an interview, so I had to work with what I had up until then (which wasn’t much). Furthermore, a lot of the things I needed for this project simply didn’t get delivered or at least had their deliveries delayed for weeks too.
Many setbacks like this can make an ambitious project nearly impossible, and so this goes to show again that maybe if I had set my sights a little lower to begin with and anticipated the circumstances I was in I would have had a much more manageable and enjoyable time.
I definitely think if I had been given another shot at this project in a different environment and with the experience I gave now that I would have absolutely aced it.
References/Notes:
The Ricky Gervais Show – Interview/podcast animated for comedic effect. Character’s designed in a way that accentuates their features
The Midnight Gospel
Blank on Blank
Creature Comforts
Samuel Bryant BA Animation 