The concept (or environment) design should not be underestimated in the process of design and development in animated filmmaking. While character design and ani- mation are clearly the most important, it must be remembered that when audiences watch a film, approximately 95 percent of what they see in each scene is the back- ground environment, whether they are conscious of this or not. Consequently, even with mediocre character design and limited animation, a film can be given the illusion of quality or a specific mood or emotional quality, if the background art is inspiration- al or high quality. The classic Disney movies were famous for their spectacular back- ground art and their great ability to set moods or themes. Even if Disney studio anima- tion and characterization had not been as good as it was, the background art would still have given audiences a superior cinematic experience.
In practical terms, a specialist called a concept artist will evolve an overall visual and color look for the entire project, under the direct supervision of the director. Then, when this look is finally achieved, the same concept artist will develop, in finer detail, a stage-by-stage representation of all the major aspects of the project or storyline. This latter operation may well take place during the pre-production stage. However, quite often, it is undertaken during development, as it is a valuable exercise in envisioning the entire aesthetic overview of the production, prior to scheduling and budgeting taking place.
A basic flat-color concept design from an initial background layout can suggest a great deal about the mood and the ambiance of any scene that is yet to be animated.
If we are considering a standard film production, then the varying moods, emotions ,and actions encountered throughout the storyline will need to be interpreted by way of different visual and color approaches to these moments. Specific colors suggest specific moods and emotions, so the concept artist will attempt to define just what color themes will work best with certain phases of the story. Similar color themes can be selected for the environments of a game project.
The actual artwork treatment is also defined at this stage. For example, will the ap- proach be bright, broad shapes and colors? Will the style be more of a delicate, wa- tercolor look? Are we talking high-tech, computer-generated realism or softly shaded chalk and charcoal textures? Maybe we’re going for a brash and anarchic vector effect. All these questions should be asked of the concept artist by the director, and the an- swers will need to be established at this stage, so that accurate schedules and budgets can be completed as a result of the creative decisions taken.
Occasionally, it is necessary to employ more than one concept artist to style a large- scale project. In fact, it might well be that specific background artists and illustrators are employed to fill this role because of particular artistic styles. The whole process can be similar to the careful casting of actors in a stage show or live-action movie, selecting one or more illustrators or artists to fit a particular mood or subject matter within the entire project. This selection can be extremely important when seeking a unique or specific look for the project in question.
As indicated, both the key character models and their appropriate background stylings have to be created and combined at this stage, to reflect each specific theme, element, or story moment, within the project. Once this is achieved, the director, producer, and the rest of the development team will have a far better appreciation of the look and A digital painting of a non-digital painting being created.
feel of the project than they did previously. This way, they can better sell the project to oth- ers, specifically when introducing it to prospective investors or distributors for their reac- tion. The quality of the script and the additional attractiveness of the project’s look will go a long way to determine whether or not the project will successfully move forward.
“Endangered Species”
With “Endangered Species,” I wanted to celebrate both the great traditional stylings of animation’s past while also utilizing modern digital technology. However, traditional- ists tend to reject the new-fangled gizmo technologies that are accessible to animators today, and the new breed of young guns consider the past as boring, old-fashioned, labor-intensive nonsense, in view of the new digital tools that do practically everything for you today. I feel that both these viewpoints undersell the potentials that either camp can offer. I wanted to bridge the two closer together, under the umbrella of one entirely new entity, to show that the two can not only co-exist but also learn from one another.
As a result, I conceived the film (and this accompanying book) as using two significant technologies that are capable of revealing the two distinctly different worlds—the bit- map environment (which symbolized the world of our traditional past) and the vec- tor environment (which is more reflective of animation’s present). Being a film that is wholly based on the technological capabilities of the humble pencil, I did not need to consider 3D concept design, except for the one moment that a Buzz Lightyear look- alike emerges.
I actually found it extremely convenient to assign the more simplistic vector approach to the evolving animator at his desk and the more illustrative, eloquent bitmap ap- proach to the film clip sequences that appear on the screen. Both concepts were sim- ply developments of the originating pencil animation material anyway, yet both tool- sets offered a treatment that would take the inherent capabilities of the pencil into quite diverse areas, which seemed to answer the creative questions I had perfectly.
With “Endangered Species” the action takes place around the same animator’s desktop environment, although the styling of these settings varied somewhat from scene to scene and era to era.