Tangerines in Autumn
A young man visits his grandfather looking for life advice
After my last film, I wanted to focus on a more character acting based short. At the time I was thinking about the relationships between the old and new, which led to me focusing on a child and their grandfather then letting this theming influence the style from there. Opposed to my last film, I decided early on that I wanted this one to be either in black and white or to have limited color. Polaris of 1000 years was a short that used its colors to differentiate different worlds and settings where as this Tangerines in Autumn would be set almost entirely in one place. Based off this idea of limited colors, I focused on making the individual character designs more detailed than Polaris's seeing as I wouldn't be worrying about coloring the whole film
Initial designs of the nephew
When showing Polaris of 1000 Years to friends, some thought that the film was supposed to me about me seeing as I did the voice over of the main character myself. This was not my intention. I wanted Polaris of 10000 Years to be a broad film that many people can relate to rather than a very personal story so I kept this in mind when designing the main character of this film. This led to me deciding almost instantly to have the character wear a hoodie and shorts as these are clothes that I would never wear together.
The nephew's hair and face gave me the most trouble when designing. Early on I decided to take a manga and anime inspired approach to its visuals which led me to looking at art from the series Jujustu Kaisen, Persona, and even Pokemon. I wanted this film to have a grounded feel so I was designing hair styles where more in line with what everyday people would wear, however, I still wanted to have a bit of that anime aesthetic. A lot of the early work on the nephew can be traced back to Itadori from Jujutsu Kaisen.
Before moving any further, I decided to draw my current design in the software and brush I planned on using for the film, Clip Studio Paint. After finishing this sketch, I wasn't happy. I wanted the character to look very tender and downbeat, but this version looking too sharp and aggressive when compared to what I had on paper. Back to the drawing board. Another aspect of the design I wasn't happy with was the hair. I thought keeping the hair short and spiky gave the character more edge than I intended. In addition to this, I was unsure about what I wanted the gender of the grandchild to be. I had determined that this time I wouldn't be providing any voices if possible so I began floating around the idea that the character would be female or female presenting. This pushed me to design the character with a more androgynous look to make it easier to change the character's gender depending on who I would be getting to voice them.
Digital design for nephew
New hair designs of the nephew
Eventually I gave the character a ponytail and a lock of hair draping down the front of their face. I also decided that the character would have some streaks of either black or white through the hair, depending on what I choose the main color of the hair to be. The character looked a lot more downbeat but was still a little too sharp in my opinion. When looking back on my inspirations, I noticed a lot of them were shonen battle style manga or shows. I began to lot more into manga with simpler faces, such as the early run of Dragon Ball. This eventually led me to looking at emojis and emoticons people use on different messaging apps.
Designs of new face
The face design was inspired by the character "の." The character was used in some emoticons for eyes and I liked the round shape of it. I flattened it out a little by little before ending on the current look. The simplified design was still expressive enough while also being easier to draw and still appearing manga and anime-like.
Nephew character turn around and expression sheet
The grandfather was a lot easier for me. I instantly knew I wanted the character to resemble an old master in a martial arts movie and began drawing up designs inspired by characters like Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, Uncle Iroh from Avatar, and Grandpa Gohan from Dragon Ball. When it came to outfit choice, I decided to base it partially after my memory of my grandfather, who was very involved in our local temple. I wanted him to wear something that was traditionally Japanese. Initially I had planned on him wearing a yukata, but I didn't think it would look particularly good when he moves to sit down in the middle of the film. Instead I gave him a haori and had more modern clothing underneath.
Early designs for the grandfather
The over all outfit design was set very quickly. After changing overall style to have more simplistic faces, all that was left was changing the grandfather's face to match the nephew's.
Grandfather with new face design
Nephew and Grandfather with colored eyes and shading
I also drew the grandfather with my chosen brush in Clip Studio Paint with the most updated design at the time. When drawing him and the nephew, I also decided to try a manga styled shading on the characters to see how they would look. This also made the characters look too sharp. So I decided I would keep the shading at a minimum. I also thought about giving the character's eyes color. I abandoned this idea after choosing to make the faces resemble emoticons as I thought this would make them lose the likeness.
Early style frames
Early on I played around with the idea of different backgrounds but ultimately decided against it for a few reasons. First of all, it would add to my production time. Second, I was afraid that the characters might get lost in the background as I decided the film would be entirely black and white. Finally, I thought having a background would make it too easy to guess the twist in the end.
Style frames
However, I did decided to have backgrounds in the inverted color scene. I thought having an empty city with a black background would give the feeling of isolation I wanted for this section of the film and would help differentiate this section from the earlier part of the film.
Polaris of 10000 years - Animated Short
A traveler chases a shining star through different times periods and worlds. This film focuses on dynamic action animation and animated camera movements.
Production of the film originated from these three frames which were originally drawn independent of each other, but were strung together by the concept of time and universe traveling with a star to link all of the setting together. After the initial sketches of the full boards, I developed style frames to give myself a goal in what the final product might look like, as well as to help try to differentiate each scene from one another.
Style frames of original three scenes
Style frames of other scenes
Revised style frames with more background work
I also wanted the traveler to wear a different outfit in each scene with a different color palette to help further communicate the multi-dimensional aspect of the film.
Character turn around for the traveler and Polaris
Expressions for the traveler and Polaris
BPM (working title) - Graphic Novel
Bounty hunters traverse a floating city to claim a mystical artifact that is said to be able to grant only one wish.
Character turn around for Aria
The initial inspiration for Aria came from the phrase "bubble gum pop". When brainstorming ideas for the type of world this story would take place in, I wanted to include a magic system where each character would have their own, unique superpower much like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, which this series takes a lot of inspiration from. I thought bubble gum pop would be a good name for an ability and could uses the power of Jojolion protagonist, Josuke Higashikata's Soft and Wet, as an starting point and design the character around their power. Initially, I planned on reusing a character design from another project and have that be the main character of the series, but I like the power of bubble gum pop a lot more than what I came up for that design, so I decided to make him into the secondary protagonist Ren and Aria was promoted to the lead. I also realized, looking at my work, that most of my work focused on a male lead and I wanted to diversify my main characters.
Character expressions and poses for Aria using an older design
Character turn around for Ren (not final)
As previously state, Ren's original design was going to be used in another graphic novel project before I shifted more focus to animation. I still liked the original look so I decided to expand on the design and revive the project. Ren went through a lot of different transformations as I was trying to decide the setting and tone of the series, bouncing from futuristic, cyberpunk world where he would fight ghosts that haunted machines, to a feudal Japan inspired aesthetic that more closely resembled the look of the original project.
Feudal Japan inspired aesthetic
Cyberpunk aesthetic
Post apocalyptic and western inspire aesthetic
Sketches of Ren and Aria
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Mood and setting drawings
Of Gods and Monsters (working title)- Graphic Novel
An archaeologist seeks to uncover the truth behind the unexplained disappearance of a fantasy world's pantheon of gods.
Character line up (color, grey scale and silhouette)
Pi character turn around and poses
There was difficulty in designing the characters and the world. This project didn't have another property or work to serve as initial inspiration, all that was settle was that there would be some characters that would be gods, not too dissimilar to the Greek and Roman pantheons. Pi was given different weapons or magics that could help give an idea of what the character would look like, who they would be and what kind of world they would inhabit. I considered giving him a giant sword, a bo staff or even the ability to grow extra pairs of arms or to use a weapon that resembled a soccer ball. It was ultimately a pair of glasses that led the direction of the character to being an archeologist and to take inspiration from Indiana Jones as well as cowboy westerns.
Early sketches of Pi
The ability to grow extra limbs was given to the potential villain of the series which resulted in this sketch, and with inspiration from the character Belaf from Made in Abyss, would develop into the character design of a giant millipede like creature where each segment of the body is a human torso.
Setting and props
Color boards and color scripts
