Bookchase

Greetings! I’m proud to present my second-year short film ‘Bookchase’, a brief short featuring one of my oldest and dearest original characters, Chrysa, alongside her little raven Freya. In this short, I sought to emulate the style of traditionally animated classics while utilizing entirely digital means. I have always been captivated by the feeling that comes with animations shot on cel, where the art feels more tactile and handcrafted when compared to our modern digital assets. Through a long process of research, perfecting drawing techniques, and compositing, it was a learning experience in all aspects of production that I enjoyed immensely, and hope to implement within future projects.

Concept Art and Development

While the main idea of the short remained consistent from start to finish, as it was always about following Chrysa in her search for Freya through the library, the style of the set changed greatly. The two illustrations above were ideas for shots I had pre-production, with the backgrounds below coming from the finished film. Due to the complexity of such a location, I created a 3D model to use as a guide within the final, where I lined up a virtual camera to screenshot as a reference. The model sped up production, allowing me to sketch out backgrounds quickly without sacrificing details. The library was meant to be a solitary place-a building beginning to fall into the hands of time, not too unlike Chrysa with her endless studies keeping her bound in one place. I wanted to give off such a feeling without words, and the model allowed me the extra time to put in those details.

Character Concepts

When it comes to designing characters I always find myself leaning towards a mix of simplified geometric shapes alongside more natural, detailed designs. Chrysa is a character I've drawn for around 8 or 9 years now, so drawing her came easy to me. Freya on the other hand was difficult. I am unaccustomed to drawing birds, however, she was quite a fun challenge to undertake.

Compositing

When compositing, I worked in several 'layers' on each character. The base animation was first done within Toon Boom Harmony using local colors only, then in After Effects, I applied different layer properties to age the image. First, a warm orange on multiply to match the characters to the colors of the library, then a duplicated layer with a slight blur on the color mode to replicate how the paint on cels can bleed into other colors, before adding a final drop shadow underneath. Once all the animation and backgrounds were combined, I added some noise and film grain to the entire footage to resemble that of actual film. For this process I used both tutorials I found online and studied a few of the cels I have in my collection.

Final Word

This film was my first go a making a piece longer than just a simple pencil test or study, and I am forever grateful for being granted the opportunity to work closely with a character that means so much to me.

Below I have also included my demo reel, containing school assignments from my first two years attending SVA, which also doubled as compositing and animation cleanup experiments I did in preparation for Bookchase.

Please enjoy, and thank you.