So I was prompted to make the animatic based on some work i’d seen from a motion graphics and design studio, based in London, called WeareSeventeen. Last year they created a series of adverts and internet idents for John Lewis’ marketing campaign leading up to the christmas season. The adverts showed festive situations made out of low poly 3D models and environments styled on pieces of paper, kind of like origami, with clever animatic transitions between the different stages of the story they were telling. All these adverts reflected a certain mood with the soft dull drained out colours of the paper and it felt really appropriate to the time of year, with it representing snow and wrapping paper etc – warmth of the light like a fire against the cold looking paper (unwrapping something on cold christmas morning).
I really liked that style as the models looked like something out of a Pixar movie, minus the super high quality textures, so it gave it a completely different feel. Particular low poly style I like.
So as we’re entering Winter, I wanted to create an animation based on the same visual style, about an old pocket watch being assembled by a bunch of construction vehicles as though it was a building. The animation will start in the bedroom of a watch maker and depict his 2D work sketches becoming 3D representations of vehicles that can physically create the watch he is designing. The animation will draw a parallel to show the great level of detail he puts into his craft, when blown up to a more recognisable state or size like a building site. As pocket watches have a tonne of parts that make it up, like all the different cogs and plates inside, I thought it would make an interesting animation to see it being built piece by piece in this way. The environment will grow out of the work papers on his desk and the vehicles will enter the scene as if they are coming out of the paper, with clever animations of them building themselves from the ground up. Cement lorries can come and lay the base, then all of the different trucks can deliver the parts for the cranes to put inside, and they all work together like on a construction yard to build the stopwatch.
The soundtrack I have chosen is meant to reflect the mood of the animation, with it being magical and up-lifting. Much like something being created in depictions of Santa’s workshop by elves, these vehicles are the watch makers little helpers making his watch for him. The music will match the progress of the of the construction with the tempo and intensity of the music changing from when they come to life and as the watch it being built up. The whistling in the song also matches that of builders whistling on construction sites or like in movies when a group of characters all join in and start working on something (hi ho off to work we go – snow white 7 dwarves)
As further context this idea could be taken on by a high-end watch company during the christmas season to encourage people to buy watches, where the stopwatch could be replaced with their merchandise and would show the immense effort and detail that goes into creating product.
As i’m most proficient in Cinema 4D of all the 3D modelling software, I will rely on this to create the models for my vehicles, my watch parts and all the environmental aspects such as the scene etc. Most of the models are made up of a series of cubes and spheres or other geometric shapes. The texturing can also be done within Cinema 4D as i’m using dull faded out colours with a paper texture added in the bump and displacement channel.
The animation on the vehicles and environment is similar to that of the Transform plugin. All the different models will be made of several different parts which can grown in size from their pivots from nothing to become the final shape of the model. It will look like they are constructing themselves out of paper.
I was also looking at implementing VRAY to render some of the scenes to give them a more hyper-realistic look.
These renders can then be exported and arranged in After Effects where I will add some colour correction and depth of field blur to the clips.
Then finally they can be taken into Premiere where I can add my soundtrack and render out the final Animation.
A problem I had to overcome was the level of detail I would use. Ideally the animatic could be longer than 2 minutes and as such I would be able to construct the watch as a building is actually made. In my case I had to show several stages of the construction happening at the same time which in turn made the scene look more busy.