The aim of the final piece was to ensure that the technical method did not obscure the hand drawn material. In a film about the fragility of humanity it is crucial to avoid a harsh, computer generated look. Each scene was first ‘acted’ in order to capture a guide picture. From this two images were produced. The main, outline picture was used as the basis of the shot. The second image contained only areas were the light would hit the subject. When combined these gave the completed image of the girl. Real-life objects were scanned to provide background textures. These were combined with outline drawings… …to produce a wall that is a mix of photo-real elements and a sketch.  The shot is then made by the careful combination of the foreground drawn girl with a background setting made from the completed textured walls. The black and white shots, while stark, detailed and clean are still easily seen to be composited from a multitude of sources. After editing together the separate shots and adding the sound effects the final stage therefore was to run the whole piece through an ‘aged film’ filter. This was for two reasons. Firstly it added a timeless story element to the production that fitted in with the no-dialogue silent-era feel. Secondly it contributed to the goal of keeping the computer-look to a minimum by blending together the image as a whole.

Two more examples comparing the original source photographs with the final image from the completed film.

Tim and Kim at work. The drawings were pen and ink on card. These were scanned on a flat-bed scanner and cleaned in Photoshop. Composition and animation was done in After Effects on an Apple G5.

Facts and Figures:

• Over 100 photographs were taken. From these over 200 drawings were produced.
• Each ‘wall’ is made up of 10 layers of textures. The ‘crane shot’ contains 184 individual elements.
• 20 Gb of data was produced. Total render time was 72 hours.
  

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