The Process

The concept:

The project goal was to create a 10-15 second looping animation of an environment or world through the lens of a silhouette that adds something to the animation's story. In my little world, a yellow submarine navigates across the deep sea traveling from one side of the screen to another. This movement gains the attention of a mermaid that takes up a large portion of the background. At first, it is unclear what she is as we can only see her from the nose up. She tracks the submarine first with her eyes building anticipation for when she physically follows the submarine out of the frame, revealing her mermaid form to the audience. In addition to acting as a window to view the scene, the deep-sea divers helmet silhouette hints at the ominous nature of the mermaid and her intentions for the submarine.

Style and Feel:

To create the style and feel of this animation I compiled imagery of deep-sea environments and creatures into a mood board. I drew inspiration from the imagery for the color, texture, and silhouette of the animation. Originally I intended the mermaid character's design to be more ominous and less cartoon-like. Although, as I looked for inspiration throughout the design process, I discovered that a cartoon villain-style character aligned better with my overall skills and feel for the animation. Once the style was decided, for both the character and environmental elements, I sketched out my character and storyboards. From this step, I flush out the scenes and make sure the joints of the character are ready for animation in Adobe Illustrator. Prepping a character for animation, in this case, means separating the limbs of the character to separate layers and using dots to indicate how the joints will rotate later.