Ohutus

The final film for university, after Aedi was rejected, this was made. While I often like animated media which is edgy, full of action while possessing a simple style, I also like media which is alike a story book, a simpler story which is almost made for a much younger audience. Thanks to looking back on my favourite storybooks as well as other adventure-based media, I end up coming up with Ohutus (which translates to 'safety', an Estonian word). It’s a story about a collection of creatures who had to be transported onto another planet to get away from a galactic massacre involving machines which aim to reduce the amount of life in the universe. While the characters are safe on Planet Ohutus, it does have its own troubles, going through nature as well as the planet's own inhabitants, slicers, a hoard of carnivorous creatures who will try and eat anything that enters their territory. The planet also has a hidden base for those who are entering the planet to avoid the war, and this is led by one eyed alien who will guide our heroes to the mountain, to touch a gem to alert Wavey, a huge creature who will take our heroes to safety, as well as the aliens supporting our heroes during their lowest point . That was the original plot anyway, the former version of this film can be seen on YouTube, so now, the end point is now both groups of creatures getting on as well as the paradise being inside the mountain as opposed to the building. Firstly, these creatures are entirely original, looking back on animals I like such as crabs, wolves and octopus's and mix them up to create characters which have their own physical traits while also looking iconic on their own. This film is mostly 2D thanks to Photoshop, resulting in many 2D landscapes as well as animating each character from scratch with some help from research. While my characters often look better for when drawing on top of my own footage, I have looked back on my basics as well as knowing what to improve which resulted in a collection of characters which can look choppy in a couple of instances, but still possess a variety of emotions and are able to interact with their surroundings to make them more like three dimensional characters. After Effects helped with a couple of aspects like unique merging transitions as well as my first ever lens flare to make the mountain's gem blow brighter. Plus, Autodesk Maya was used to animate some scenes at the start of the film which not only were blueprints for when drawing more settings, but it allowed me to rotoscope the 3D camera pan shots as well as the flying robots. All those introduction scenes were done using 3D, and are now 2D after drawing all over them. This is yet another innovation of 2D and 3D that was performed, creating a 3D landscape to perform 2D animation which looks and acts more professional, it's useful if you are like me where I struggle to draw settings etcetera on my own without using a template to draw on. The world that was created was inspired by my trips to the Lake Distract and Yorkshire, and the inspiration allowed me to generate a world that was both mountainous and tropical, using a concistent colour scheme of blue, green and orange, 2D features which possess a variety of texture which adds to the visual feel of the animation (making everything like a painting, and what storybooks often look like). This is an example of a piece of media which is fun and simple on the surface, but it does include a lesson and other context. The theme of this film is the idea of having to go through a new situation and eventually finding a good place for yourself within the new position you are in. A lot of children would have struggled to move to a new town or school which made them experience new problems while also finding their footage, also remembering how to overcome obstacles, and knowing others will support you. To go even deeper, going from one dangerous place to another only to find a safe place is reminiscent on how there are many that go from country to country in order to escape war and protect themselves. My film is an example of a children's product where it has a theme beneath a fun looking product, and as others remember films like this one in the future as they start to understand the world more, it makes these films good lessons to learn despite the harsh reality, giving them a heads up that the world isn't all butterflies and rainbows. Overall, while the animation, compositing and setting design could have been improved upon, this was still another positively responded film thanks to university and other acquittances of mine due to going for a rememberable style, being able to generate iconic characters as well as presenting a theme and narrative which is easy to grasp.