Artistic Exploration is a short film showing the difficulties of the creative process through the perspective of an ink blob that gets away from the brush. The blob has to travel back across the studio to reach the artist and fulfill his purpose by becoming part of a completed art piece. The background illustrations were done with a warm color palette and retained their painterly textures to make the black ink stand out and to show that the ink painting is a different type of work that is normally done by the artist in the film, making the process difficult and frustrating. The character animation was created using After Effects and placed in a studio setting illustrated with Procreate.
Process
Research
Moodboard with lots of different illustration styles and character sheets. I watched numerous short films and drew references to help establish my own style and the pacing of my story. This is a separate board I referenced when creating the environment of an artist’s studio/workspace. Includes pictures I took of my dear friend in the studio, where I thought about how my character would be viewing the world.
Sketches
Early on, I did some sketching in Procreate and made a quick animation to get a sense of the character. I decided to make a character sheet as well to help with making him expressive and consistent.
Storyboard
To completely develop the story, I created a storyboard that I could refer to as I was creating the assets for the short and animating the character.