Context of Practice: CoP Practice: Background Design

Finally started working on the actual animation. So first of I started with essentially the same background sketch I did in the previous blog post, figuring out perspective in out doors was the difficult part. For some reason understanding perspective is a lot easier in doors than out doors, probably because indoors you see objects in certain context and you can align some objects to the presictive lines of walls, ceilling or floor. This was a nice chance to recap on my knowledge of drawing.This brought me back to arts school where I attempted to draw 3 stories of my schools hallway with alms fisheye perspective. When I finally got the hang of when the lines are supposed to bend and when they are straight I understood how perspective works a lot better:

So when I recapped on this I figured vectors are perfect for this job because you can draw and bend lines really quickly and make everything really neat. The first background I did was this one;

The perspective here was not that difficult so it did not take long to make. I animated the smoke as well, To give it more depth Ive put up a few pipes in the foreground so they would move out of the way when camera pans into the view. Then I carried on making the next one:

This one seemed a bit dull and needed something to happen while the camera was panning through the view so I figure to put through a few poles passing by to give it yet again an impression of depth, especially when things unclose move quicker than the ones very far away, like when you're on a train and the things unclose flash by so quickly it's impossible to focus on them, whereas the mountain in the distance moves very slowly. As I wanted it to be synchronise with the music I made the poles pass by as with the beat of the music. Then I moved on making the establishing shot of the factory:

This did not demand of lot of brain work just a bit more detail than the other ones, because I felt this shot was important, and it needed to grab your attention a bit more. Then logically I would establish the environment inside the factory. this is where I wanted to change up the colour and make it red/black to make it look a bit evil. Because in a way that is how I feel about schools. Not that they are villain type of evil. Just the kind that tries to make you something you might not necessarily want to be. This is where the perspective got tricky. So I started of with the perspective point and dragging a bunch of lines from it.

After neating the lines up a bit I started giving them a bit more angles and thickness.

Then adding details and boom:

As for the lighting I decided to light it from the floor up to give it this oozing lava feel, or rather hinting that there's something going on down there but you can't see i yet. Also it sort of ampliphiet this evil feel I was going for.

I did the next background with applying the same logic, but the pace of the animation needed something animated in it so in the foreground I thought puttin moving gears would liven it up a bit as well as giving it a mechanised factory feel.

Then it was the tricky part of showing the factory making a product but not yet revealing what exactly it is. I did not want blur the only moving thing the view because either the view has to be super detail so the it takes the attention off the moving blurry thing or not use blur but be very careful with what show. So I tried to use silhouettes and hide them slightly behind the production lines being in perspective from the view below. So I start doff with two perspective points: