Final Major Project: merfolk

This year the biggest project we have our major project, for which I have written a short mockumentary about merfolk. The premise is that they have been living amongst people on land ever since the oceans became too polluted about ten years ago. An elderly couple are interviewed about how they have adjusted to life in Britain, and discuss the prejudices they have faced. Footage of events that have effected the merpeople community is include in the documentary, including appearances from Tony Blair, Nick Griffin and the Westboro Baptist Church.

I am at the point now that all pre-production is finished. I completed the animatic fairly quickly so I had a good idea of what I was doing from an early stage. I was concerned about finding appropriate voice actors, but in the end my two unnamed protagonists were voiced by my parents, who have done a surprisingly awesome job at capturing the optimistic yet vulnerable outlook of the characters. I had a rough script written, which was half-learned then recalled to maintain the feel of natural speech. I recorded tonnes of audio (with a lot of hilarious improvised outtakes) and then edited the best bits together, using real television and radio documentaries as reference. All the other audio is from real-life sources, news footage and interviews.

Character designs from initial animatic.

In terms of look development, I always wanted to go for something simple, and emotive. My film is pretty adventurous, with several speaking characters, and I wanted the aesthetic to drive the story, rather than being the main focus itself. After several concepts, I settled for this flat shaded look, with simple but interesting designs for the man and woman. It was vital they had distinct silhouettes, as the last shot is the two of them watching the sun set over the sea. The use of cel-shading has been great as it reduces UV-mapping and texturing, and gives the option of using more matte-painted backgrounds as opposed to modeled environments. I also like the juxtapositon between real-life situations and natural dialogue with such a stylised look. Although they are merfolk, this is not a fantasy film, and the focus is much more on their status as refugees than as half-fish people.

The main character models (minus final details). All land-dwelling merpeople are wheelchair users, obviously.

As of now I have finished the models for the two main characters, and have almost completed rigging. I should be at the stage of starting animation by next week. I am really excited to begin to bring these characters to life. I have also modeled and rigged Tony Blair's head and a protester merman who also has a speaking part. I have created a template for a rigged head, and have been efficient in creating multiple characters without having to individually build blendshapes for each one. Without this system I would have days more work to pull of this ambitious number of speaking characters.

An example of poses from merman rig (pre-skinning, hence dodgy elbows). Also, these poses are far more extreme than is required in the film, I was just testing the rig.

During screenings, the animatic has been pretty well received and I am confident that if I continue at this quality, at this pace, I will have a good final piece. I will post more info as the project progresses.

Stay tuned!