It’s been a minute but things have not been slow. I think I have finally come to a conclusion on exactly what I want to do with the backgrounds for the chicken processing plant sequence in Coal Republic. The first idea for the exteriors actually came from my friend Rudy when I posted on Facebook that I was stuck on the sequence. He mentioned using stock photos of concentration camps from World War II. It’s such a brilliant idea and goes along with some of the other aesthetics in the film. I’m sure I will print some of these and alter them in some way first, but that’s going to be the starting point for the exterior shots in the sequence. The interiors were different creature altogether. One of the major things that I really like doing in this film is playing with the juxtaposition of the flatness of the animation drawings to the textures of the backgrounds. I really wanted to ramp this up a little bit in the interiors of the chicken sequence. I’ve played around for nearly two years on concepts for this, as my earliest ones date back to 2016. This evening I played quite a bit with some different materials, and I came up with something that I really like for the backgrounds. I took an old canvas board and painted red-brown acrylic on it, and then once that dried used antique white acrylic caulking as a medium to manipulate and create the background texture, which almost simulates old white wash boards or weathered texture. Where the acrylic underneath was not totally dry it blended in bits with the acrylic caulking and created some really nice variation on the surface. My first attempt had too much texture, but I went back with a credit card and gently smooth down some of the surface being sure to leave some of that wonderful texture behind. The lighting of this painting during photographing was also important in the final composition. I really like the results, but still need to play with it more. I will probably need about 20 to 30 backgrounds for the sequence and at least now I have a starting point for developing them. I’ve only just started scanning the animation drawings for this sequence, so there still plenty of time. I’ve put the war sequence on hold until I can shoot some footage to complete it. I need to shoot some live action close ups and extreme close-ups to play with and intercut into the animation. I posted a request for actors and had quite a few people who are interested, which was exciting. Things are starting to progress forward a little bit more rapidly, which is good considering I am behind schedule as usual. The good news is that the schedule is totally my own making, as my project is fully funded by me. One of the few benefits of being a no budget animator.
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Jacob FertigArtist, Educator, Activist, Micronationalist, et al. Archives
November 2019
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