You Better Watch Out...
It's the time of a year again!! Wait, did you hear that? Could it be? Is it he? No one has ever seen him work before. Oh boy! What a joy!! Gather around kids. Santa is coming to town!!
Santa Crash
2D Animation / 3:09 min / Jan 2015
INSPIRATION
Since 2011, I would draw my own Christmas card every year. In 2014, I decided to make a difference. Instead of a static picture, how about an animated Christmas card? First, I have always been a fan of motion graphics. Second, it could also enhance my portfolio! Therefore, this year, it would be a Christmas short video!
While I was thinking about the plot and storyline on my way home after work, I found myself being annoyed by phubbers again. Suddenly, an idea popped up in my mind. Over the past few years, text driving has become one of the main reasons of a traffic accident. During Christmas holidays, there must be tons of people driving a long way back home. Therefore, I decided to implant a message in this video. To say Merry Christmas as well as telling them how dangerous text-driving is. Once I made this decision, the story started to show itself in my head piece by piece. Question, who always drives around during Christmas? Santa!! Thanks to technology, now he has something to do with the annual delivery. Is it a good thing though?
Let's check it out.
Santa as a phubber in Santa Crush
STORY
At Christmas Eve, a child was woken up by a mysterious sound. "What is it?" Still sleepy, the kid walked to the window and found out where it was from. It was Santa! He had brought all the gifts to those who had been nice during this year! Full of excitement, the little child jumped up and down, trying to get the attention of Santa. Unkown to him, something has already caught Santa eyes...
PRODUCTION
This time, I skipped the process of storyboard and jumped ahead to the production.
In this animation, I intend to use only vector graphics without gradient which is a style I start to grow fond of. The workload is higher but I just love the result.
Like what I did in The Soup, I built the 3D model of the bedroom from the opening in Maya. After rendering pictures out in B/W, I imported them in Illustrator for coloring. In this way, I have a more accurate perspective as well as the control of color and light. This method works better if you don't have much movement on the camera.
The most interesting part of this production is to design the made-up game Christmas Crush, especially its UI. I have never been involved in a game development before but it always seems fascinating to me. Though I didn't really design the system but just simulate the performance with animation technique, it still required some brainstorming. I spent quite some time calculating how many bricks would disappear and the chain-reaction them brought. Time-consuming though, the process was fun and also made me respect the coders behind each game.
Brick designs for Christmas Crush- a made-up match-three puzzle video game.
DESIGN of CHRISTMAS CRUSH
UI and graphic design of Christmas Crush
By 2014, Candy Crush Saga was the most successful and popular mobile game in the world, even my mother was addicted to it. Therefore, when it came to designing a fictional game that made Santa entirely hooked on, Candy Crush was the obvious role model.
The most interesting part of this production is to design the made-up game-Christmas Crush, especially its UI design. I had never been involved in a game development before but it was something that I was highly interested in. Though I didn't really design the whole system but merely simulated its performance with animation techniques, it still required some keen observation and attentive calculation. I spent quite some time calculating how many bricks would disappear, the chain-reaction they brought and the acceleration of their fall. Time-consuming though, the process was fun and also made me respect the engineer behind each game.
MULTIPLANE CAMERA
One of the experimental techniques I tried in this production is the multiplane camera. When the camera zoomed out from the house to the entire field, I wanted to create a realistic sense of three-dimensional depth in a 2D setting. It was a technique I observed from various Disney films, such as the opening of The Beauty and The Beast. The principle was the same but I used a digital camera instead. The tricky part of this technique is to extend the edge of each visual component as much as possible in case of unwanted gaps appearing during the movement of the camera. The arrangement of the positions of each component on the X-axis was relatively important as well.
background setting from 360° view
3D RENDERING
In order to create an accurate perspective, I built a 3D model of the bedroom of the opening scene in Maya. After rendering pictures out in B/W, I imported them in Illustrator for coloring. In this way, I have a more accurate perspective as well as the control of color and light. This method works better when you don't have much camera movement.