In my animatic, I want to create one 2D character and one 3D stylised character against a realistic 3d background, I have chosen these two after being inspired by many films that combine the two medias. An example of this is the iconic ballroom dance scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale & Wise, 1991), it shows 2D characters dancing against beautiful 3D ballroom.

 I want to showcase how contrasting the protagonist and antagonist are to one another. I originally was just going to do this with two young men and have their height and body mass be completely different to one another (the protagonist being shown to be more fragile by being shorter and lighter in body mass than the protagonist).

However, I thought I’d take it a step further by having them both be different genders to one another (boy and girl). I feel as though by having them be different genders it’ll make the pair of them seem even more alien to one another, on not just a physical level, but also an emotional one. Libby, the female protagonist character, will be 2D and Paul, the male antagonist, will be animated in 3D. By having each character in different medias of animation, it showcases to the audience how alien-like they are to one another.

 

Synopsis

Three house mates are living together in a small-looking, halls of residence in an un-named university. They both have the luxury of having their own private rooms, unfortunately they must share the kitchen with one another. It is an unspoken rule that none of the house mates share food with one another, and to avoid people getting confused each label all their own food with their names on.

The protagonist, Libby, lives with two boys she doesn’t really know too well, one of whom she doesn’t get on with too well.

Libby wakes up one morning to her alarm going off on her phone, she wakes up and groggily tries to turn the alarm off when she suddenly gets a text notification from a friend.

“Hi Libby, 😊 we still meeting today?”

Libby replies with.

“Yeah ofc, I’m just going to get some food from the kitchen, then I’ll get ready. See you soon!”

Shortly after replying, Libby groggily makes her way into the shared kitchen, but suddenly jumps at the sight of her housemate’s underwear on the floor. She stares at the underwear in disgust, then turns towards his closed bedroom door in annoyance, were she sees the sign ‘Paul’s Room’ on the side of the door.

Eventually making her way into the kitchen, still annoyed about Paul, she opens the fridge door. Her eyes begin to scan over all the pre-named food before they eventually land on an empty plate with her name on.

Slamming the fridge door in frustration, she turns to her left, finding Paul happily eating her food at the table. She stomps over to him as he smirks at her the whole time, only adding to her annoyance and frustration with him.

At this point, Libby has had enough of Paul and brings her fist down to his face in a slapstick fashion. Leaving both Paul and their table in critical condition, she triumphantly takes the food from Paul’s shaking hands with a smirk of her own, mimicking Paul prior.

 

Character Design and Development

Libby will be the only 2D animated character in this piece, emphasising her feeling out of her comfort zone living with a 3D Paul in a 3D environment. As mentioned prior, I wanted to make my protagonist (Libby) and antagonist (Paul) opposites. My piece won’t have a lot of audios in, so I need to visually show how different the two are through their designs and their interactions. I expanded on my basic character ideas from before and wrote some more in-depth bullet point about each individual character.

 

Libby

• Her appearance should be feminine.

• Should look fastidious and tidy to contrast with Paul’s messiness.

• Hair kept short and tidy to emphasise that Libby cares about her appearance looking smart.

• Main emotion should be annoyed to showcase how long she has had to put with Paul’s messiness and antics.

• Should be made up of mostly circles/ovals to show she is a non-threatening character, making the ending more shocking

 

I wanted to step out of my comfort zone in this project. Unlike past projects where I had made my characters look realistic, I decided that Libby and Paul should have a lopsided but simple character design. Before I began designing my characters, I decided to create a mood board and thumbnails, so they can be used for reference in the design process. The images below show the mood board and thumbnails I made for Libby’s character.