THE NIFTY PROJECT
Environment/Keyframe Design & Colorscript for Animation
The Nifty Project is an animated short currently in pre-production, to which we contributed during a short intensive team workshop at the Anomalia incubator—under the daily mentorship from the Emmy® Award winning artist Rustam Hasanov. Here I share the process of my contribution to the project.
THE CHALLENGE
The translation of loose scene ideas into concrete moods and environments that work together as a whole, as a part of a sequence of shots—so they convey the story well.
OUTCOME
A complete successuful visualisation of the short film.
THE BRIEF
Long story short—small, cute creatures called Nifties invade a society of grumpy, corrupted people in order to spread and teach kindness to them, which they have never experienced before.
Each of the team members chose a couple of scene ideas provided by the storyboard team to visualise in the form of a colorscript. After that, we took one of the rough color keys and developed it into a fully designed concept.
Brainstorming
This time, we have left reference searching for later so that it wont restrict the ideation process. I started by coming up with loose composition ideas in the form of thumbnail sketches—more focused on the relationship of geometric shapes rather than on specific designs.
Colorscript
After choosing the one best sketch for each shot, the next step was to choose the right colors for the overall sequence of shots in a way that would be meaningful, contrasting, and that made sense for what is going on in the narrative at that moment.
Every color and lighting choice had to be justified. We assigned an iconic color palette to both of the character groups—Nifties had pastel pinks, whites and lush greens (because everywhere they go, flowers and other flora start rapidly growing), while on the other hand, the unkind people’s colors were desaturated grays, browns, blues, and purples, with occasional red highlights.
At this point we were still thinking only about the light, colors, emotions that we wanted to evoke through these and their relationship to the story as a whole. All of the shapes and rough designs are just placeholders for what comes next.
Finding the Right Reference
Now it’s time for a more thorough reference search. The image I’ve chosen for further completion is the shot that pictures the Nifties “taking over” the city while the people cheer and embrace them. As a result the city is being overgrown by giant flowers, which contrast with the harsh angular architecture of the grumpy people.
A Brutalist socialist architectural style seemed like the ideal fit and communicated the society’s sterile, unfriendly personality well. I often like to reference some things I have personally experienced in real life, so the flowers were inspired by photos from my trip
to Italy.
Preparation for Layout
I like to do numerous studies beforehand in order to connect these ideas in my head while I’m designing—that way I don’t have to worry about the lack of visual information to draw from and won’t have to rely on reference so much during the process—that would restrict me too much.
Layout Design
We looked at and analysed a lot of the golden age Disney movie layout drawings for inspiration. Thanks to all of the initial thumbnail composition sketches and studies, I was able to quickly come up with concrete designs and didn’t have to worry so much about where to actually place things.
The Final Concept
Most of the lighting and color choices were already figured out beforehand and, in general, if it works as a small color key or thumbnail sketch, it will work as a bigger image as well. If I take the time to plan and follow all these steps, the final painting process will always go much smoother.
Results
As a team we ended up with a successful complete visualisation of the short film (that existed only in the form of sticky notes at the beginning) from start to finish, which can serve as a great starting point for further development.
