Working within the medium of digitally created film presented the challenge of maintaining the basics of cinematic vocabulary. Short film White Storm is part of the broader context that is very similar to the game cinematic genre. Extreme close-ups of the human eye is a highly frequent shot type that enhances the perception of the character’s intent. Most of the time cinematic trailers are driven by action and spectacular visual effects. Feature film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011) utilises the advantage of digital graphics to travel into the character’s pupil as a metaphor to reading the mind’s point of view of the Caesar character, performed by Andy Serkis. Audi R8 The eye commercial produced by the London-based agency ManvsMachine in 2016 is an example of translating features of the human eye in the storytelling context.
Spiritual science fiction romanticism as the main theme for the project is very similar to the game cinematic trailers. Contemporary media examples that successfully challenged the perception of reality and aesthetics of the fictional world are Dishonored 2 (Arkane Studios, 2016), Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment, 2016) and the Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games, 2016).
The human face, the eye and the environment became key elements of the cinematic language in the film. While introducing the audience to the character and the surrounding world the anticipation had to be built. This is designed to increase the emotion towards the character. This is realised via the use of insert shots of the environment details to establish the atmosphere on the digital set. The film starts with the wide establishing shot to demonstrate the overall scale of the action. The manipulation of reality created by digital modelling is meant to create sensation around the further unfolding action. The main motivation of the shot design is based on the idea of demonstrating spectacular visuals. In the film the face has a dominant contribution to the visual storytelling.
The face by itself tells the story without the dialogue and by projecting the feeling of the character. It was meant to create a connection with the character looking directly at the audience.
Every shot was designed to accommodate the architectural environment of the character setting. The reason for each shot is based on the dialogue of the narrative to communicate the presence of two personalities. Later shots started to blend the performance of two personalities together to illustrate the transitions that happen inside the character’s mind. The combination of creative differences between shot spacing in relation to the human face creates a catalogue that the audience starts to operate with. The eye level of the character is maintained throughout the film and it relies on the 120-degree angle around the point of interest. Tilted camera angle is used to empower the locked position of the character. A virtual camera across the shots uses the focal length between 55 to 75 degrees, which is very similar to the refractive index of the human cornea. This allows the visualisation of the profile of the head to be realistic. Most of the shots are frontal; however, the depth perception is augmented with separation of the image into the level of details controlled by the depth of field.
Camera movement is very slow and represents a classic dolly interpretation and vertical panning. In terms of decor for the shot, the work of the rich concept design is meant to draw attention to details of the character’s cybernetic costume and the environment components around her. Each shot was treated as the stand-alone photograph that borrows high contrast low-key lighting from the Film Noir genre. In conjunction with steel white colour, this provides the spiritual atmosphere of the futuristic melancholy.
S U P P O R T
The film is designed around the way human eye can tell a story; however, the single element as such can become disconnected in the context of the dramatic narration. The design and scale of the digital space creates visual accommodation of the performance including the character head. The movement in the film is based on the facial performance, head movement, speech animation, gaze direction, etc.
To enhance the realism of the allocated setting, the secondary support of the animation is realised with the performance of the character’s body. Special attention is given to shoulder position to provide a sense of connection between the emotion and body.
These gestures support the main action. The animation of the physical objects such as wires and cables connected to the character’s body are meant to create live visual process. This contributes to the experience of what the action in the film represents. Animation of the insect creature sitting on the shelf next to the character provides the emotion of fear simultaneously with the message of a secondary life presence in the environment. The gut tubes of the character’s stomach fluctuate as they pump the contents of the cybernetic support substance. Technical panels and screens are functional in the environment via the blinks of LED lamps and the active video feed on the operational monitors. The elements of the cybernetic costume design such as the mask- helmet mechanism is animated to reveal the character’s face and make sense of the unknown at the start of the film.
SOUND
Driven by the motivation to separate two personalities performed by one person, the voice of the two had to undergo modification. The voice of the artificial intelligence has a computer generated nature. To create an effect of the ghost in relation to the machine voice, the echo effect is applied that successfully distinguishes human from the synthetic. Music in the film is inspired by the aerospace exploration and communication recorded during the NASA Apollo mission. It is an ambient musical soundtrack based on samples of the contemporary ambient genre.
FUTURE PROPOSITION
In order to enhance project quality, the fields of future research proposition are discussed to gain insight into the elevation of visual quality and communicative potential of the work. Visual effects do serve a very significant contribution to the visual aesthetics of the film. In order to complete unfinished areas of the digital set, the use of fog effect can be utilised that will create a sense of movement in the scene.
At a pivotal moment in the dialogue the character Sandy pronounces the words “I love you”. This can be dramatised with the creation of liquid simulation for her tears. More specifically, this can be realised by solving the path for the tear to run on the face and the shape of the liquid. From an anatomical perspective, this can be realised by placing the emitter of water inside the geometry of the face.
To recreate a real human in digital space, geometry of the dentures can be referenced from the physical dental cast of the actress. This process involves the use of plastic tray filled with a dental alginate impression material in relation to the actress teeth. This will create a negative form of the dentures, which is later filled with a dental stone material to create a positive model of both the upper and lower teeth. Later the cast is photographed separately to provide data for the digital surface using the photogrammetry method. This approach models anatomically correct human teeth for digital characters.
For the creation of the digital hair the method of polygonal cards is utilised. The alpha map creates the transparency effect and allows seamless transition between cards. The main reason for using polygonal cards is the lack of computational capacity to process individual geometry of the hair strain.
Currently, the animation system does not have anatomically correct facial expressions. This process refers to the 4D augmentation where FACS and speech-based shapes are built with the scale preservation. This will sculpt a very unique facial expression for the character. The amount of skin displaced across the expression is measured with the delta between the expression and neutral face using the matrix of the colour dot pattern.
Colour mapping and styling of the visual appearance in the film is meant to invent new way of painting on the digital surface. Traditional painting methods in conjunction with pencil drawings are used to create source material for projection mapping on three dimensional models. This will distinguish the work with the unique look of a colourful illustration. The experiment was done as a step forward in the development of the project to create a textured surface of the human eye area. This will support the presence of the artificial intelligence as an underlying layer of the subsurface scattering effect. The key reason for this process is to avoid cliché.
Purely research-driven investigation into the bio-mechanical simulation of the facial anatomy will provide the ability to deform the geometry of the face with the presence of the underlying structure. This is realised with the use of nCloth solver to calculate the physics of the collision and tension of the muscle. The result of this stage is the muscle-based system for providing soft deformations of the mesh driven with the kinematics of the performance capture.
The creature modelling is revisited from the modelling perspective and the angle of realism to create the emotion of fear. Adding an additional layer of wires and cables in the environment will enrich the visual landscape of the film. The possibility to place the entire digital set inside the geometry of a sea shell will allow a wider space for placing decor around the character.
Typography and stylistic choice of the identity sign of the film gives the idea of creating an artificial human eye.
Distribution of the film project is planned to be submitted to computer animation and film festivals around the world. The creation of the web presence for the project will support interest of the audience.
CONCLUSION
The computer animated short film, White Storm went through stages of predevelopment and planning and has reached significant progress in the digital design stage. The modelling of the digital set is complete and will be enhanced further based on the individual shot. The cinematic construction of the project is final and the number of shots are set.
The project summarises the creative technical framework around the process of creating digital film. It involves advanced use of technology in relation to the comprehensive knowledge of the human anatomy. Thematically, the project serves the key establishment for the ground breaking digital character design and includes an innovative approach to the functional digital art.
