I found out about the short film Here’s the Plan about a year ago and I’ve been
waiting excitedly for it to come out because it was the first thing I’ve seen in a long
time that felt honest about romance.
We’re inundated with super sexy, dramatic adult and teenage romances, but we don’t
get much that’s about successful long term relationships.
If you’re in a happy marriage or have been together with someone for at least a few years
you’ll know how underrepresented your kind of relationship is in the media.
It just doesn’t exist.
Before I talk about Here’s the Plan, here’s your chance to watch it.
It is almost twenty minutes long.
Okay.
So, 3D animation.
I happened to watch an interview with Don Bluth - a famous 2D
animator - and he said something that gave me an Ah-Hah moment.
He said as soon as there was a successful 3D animation, everybody started copying that
style and now all 3D looks generic.
Think about it.
All 3D movies kind of look the same, don’t they?
Especially if you compare them to 3D video games that have such drastically different
art.
3D animated movies all use this same style and only on a rare occasion do you get a movie
like The Book Of Life which is so visually different that as an artist you stop and say,
“I have to see that.”
Here’s the Plan is that different style.
The characters have simple black pupils instead of detailed cartoon eyes.
The animal puppet models don’t have fur.
Instead they have a hand painted texture.
The shader is a flat 2D toon shader instead of complex soft shadows.
I would say some of the style choices were because it’s an independent animation with
a small team and budget, but that’s not the case - the style choices were intentional.
Everybody knew in the beginning it had to be simple or the movie would never be finished.
The cultural influence on the art style is also different from what artists in North
America are exposed to, since the director Fernanda Frick is Chilean, and the animation
is made in Chile.
Frick directed this with team of 32 people and finished it in two years.
The film’s budget was $50,000 and Frick had to supplement that by doing art commissions
and teaching classes to make more money.
Kind of like in the film, hee hee.
What’s surprising to me and what you may find incredibly useful is how well documented
the making of the film is.
Normally animators make these projects and they don’t talk about what their thought
process was.
Frick has a blog where she’s posted articles about how to come up with ideas for short
movies, how to design characters, and they’re well written and easy to understand.
I’ll put the link to that below.
One element of animation the blogs don’t talk about is something called a color script.
This is where you make concept art for your movie in order and apply the right type of
setting colors and lighting to fit the emotional progression of the film.
This way you can show the other artists on your team what colors and mood lighting to
use at every scene.
At the beginning of Here’s the Plan everything is clear and bright.
As the plot goes on the set becomes more grayscale and the lighting toned in blue as the characters
stray further and further from their dream and from each other.
I think what really gets me about the movie is that while it’s about this couple, it’s
also about losing sight of what’s important.
It takes a lot of work, a long time, and some unplanned detours to make a big dream come
true.
Sometimes good or bad things happen that distract you, but no matter how stuck you think you
are, you can always choose to change.
There may be a big sacrifice, but it’s worth it.
It’s worth it.
So… what’s your plan?