THE AFTERLIFE
by: Ruth Perala and Samael D. Martinez Valladares
(for the Bible of the work with both of our work, as well as The Treatment for this project, visit: theafterlifeanimation.carrd.co. in this blog, you will only see my work.)
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MY ROLE IN THIS PROJECT:
After some setbacks in the start, we were finally able to start off this project with a cleared midset as the second semester started. We decided to divide our work so that Samael would be in charge of drawing the base sketch animations for me to line and color them, quite how Samael had done our animatic. But unfortunately, this method did not work and we mutually agreed on me taking over the animation, still using some of Samael’s previously sketched out draft animations as inspiration, though they did not all make it to the finished project.
From there, I also took over the audio editing as well as most of the backgrounds.
Our project started off as a regular short film, but ended up as a short animated music video after getting the Okay from Omid to make it happen. We were lucky to be able to use AmaLee’s song Kaibutsu for the finished product, though we were a bit saddened to have to let go our chosen voice actor, Crystal Lee, who was originally going to be voicing The Girl.
THE TREATMENT:
Logline.
The Mysterious Girl wakes up in a dreamland and is pulled by a mysterious individual, Angelo, to a world for the dead.
Programs.
The programs used to make this project possible are: ToonBoom Harmony, Clip Studio Paint EX, Adobe Photoshop.
SYNOPSIS:
The Afterlife is the biggest market you would ever find. Souls of the dead and creatures go alongside each other to offer a good pass through death, before some can go back to life once they trade their soul for a new one. You lost your eye while you're alive? Certainly you can fine a new one here! It's full of magnificent buildings and guides ready to assist you. Sadly, the only way to get here is by being a supernatural creature, or by being dead.
This story starts with a young girl accidentally stumbling into an unknown place, almost as if she just woke up in a dreamland. She is surrounded by clouds and before her stands an unknown male figure with a mask on his face, reaching his hand out to her.
Hesitantly, she reaches out her own hand and decides to follow this stranger that seemed to be there to greet her almost too coincidentally. He pulls her through a reddish brown gate, after which he disappears and she finds herself in an unknown city, surrounded by unknown creatures and people.
Scared, she starts running forward, trying to find somebody that could help her figure out just what is going on. She finds a place named The Afterlife and decides to enter, but before she has the chance to ask for help, a strange looking young boy with a fish bowl as a head starts pestering her. Freaked out, she quickly pulls away. This is when the shop owner, Name, a strange man with pointy ears, lets out a sigh, knowing that he is going to be needed.
Together with Name and the fish boy, Uni, the girl starts looking for answers as to how did she end up in a place for the dead if she, in fact, has not died.
It is an adventurous story with a lot of potential and fun characters. In the video we catch glimpses of other background characters such as the restaurant owner and the black market seller.
After the finishing scene with the trio walking through the city, the credits start appearing on screen.
CHARACTERS
(for full images, visit the carrd link provided at the start of the post)
Other than spirits of dead people, the Afterlife is full of supernatural creatures. Most of them are in some ways related to death itself, though it is not always completely necessary. Creatures such as demons, even monsters, walk along the streets. They can be found as shop owners, tourist guides or doing any other job in the market.
Name - The Shinigami
Shinigami are Japanese Death Gods or Death Spirits. They are akin to the Grim Reaper in many ways, however these supernatural beings may be somewhat less frightening and they arrived later on the folklore scene. Shinigami have also transformed their unique role in Japanese culture over the centuries.
Name is the shop’s owner and one of the three main characters. He sells all sorts of things, including eyes, fingers and other random body parts that someone in need might want to buy.
He is a rather grumpy and exhausted individual who just can’t seem to catch a moment of peace to himself. Name does not have memories of who he used to be, all he knows is that he got his name after finding a random name plate on the ground with ”Name” written on it. And here we are.
The Mysterious Girl - A Human
The girl is the main character of the story. She appears to be quite freaked out after suddenly appearing in a land meant for the dead, feeling more concerned about how she got there in the first place rather than figuring out how to stay there. She is constantly on the move, trying to find somebody that would be able to help her. She wears a look of concern and confusion on her face majority of the time, sometimes even a bit disgusted with the things she is seeing.
Uni - Fish Boy
Uni is a young boy with a fish bowl as a head. He is often pestering Name, asking him a lot of unnecessary questions and bothering all of his customers. Needless to say, Name is quite fed up with his antics. Uni tags along with Name and The Girl for her search for answers.
Angelo
Angelo is a mysterious individual that we see being the person to drag The Girl through the gate of The Afterlife. He disappears right after and we don’t see him again afterwards in the animation. Could it be that he is the one with the answers?
OTHER SIDE CHARACTERS:
In the animation, we see a brief glimpse of the following three characters. Amongst them is the Black Market seller, but we do not see much of what he is up to, just him wearing a rather mischievous grin on his face once he appears on the screen.
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CONCEPT ART SKETCHES:
For the concept art, we wanted to focus on a city setting as that would be the main focus of the animation. We looked into different city districts in China and Japan using Google Maps Street View and other pictures that we could find onlie.
Using those as inspiration, we came up with something that worked for our story specifically. We knew that we wanted our story’s background to be mainly bright colors, something that would really make it look lively, yet sort of odd and almost gloomy. To kind of bring out the fact that the creatures there are in fact affiliated with death.
I was in charge of designing the place Name works at. I used traditional Japanese stores in Kyoto as a reference and played around with different colors that I felt like would fit our animation and ended up going with the one down below for the base design of the place. However I plan to switch things up a little for the final production.
FINISHED CONCEPT ART / BACKGROUNDS:
The backgrounds, for me, were something new and fun to work on. I have always been curious about background designing but haven’t really dabbled in that area much yet, so when I got to design majority of them, I was so excited.
Personally, the city in the last picture is my favorite and it is clear I put the most thought into it. I am very proud of my work.
the image above was colored by Samael.
the image above was colored by Samael.
COLOR TEST:
Unfortunately, we did not get to use the colors that I had tried out at first as the idea of using colors with proper shading turned out to be too time consuming to fit our already time consuming and ambitious idea. This was definitely one of the setbacks that we had to figure out in order to be able to proceed forward, but luckily we found a good method of using contrasting colors to bring out the characters from the backgrounds.
Like here:
INSPIRATIONS:
Using pictures of real places as inspiration like stated earlier, we were able to get a better idea of what we wanted to do, and I was able to figure out how much my current skill level would take without overwhelming myself, yet being able to learn in the process of doing.
We also had taken a look at several different animated music videos and films, such as some of the most well known animated films like: Spirited Away, specifically the market scene with the shadow people.
Some of the animated videos we looked at were animated by Komugiko, a newly risen name in the animated music video community in Japan, as well as Eve’s music videos starring numerous different animators from all around the world. Some of my personal favorites were animated by Zemyata.
We figured out that by using Komugiko’s simplistic art style as inspiration, we would be able to get a good feeling of our animation. Though, we still have a long way to go to reach her skill level, I was happy to be able to learn from her work.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Overall, I am so happy with how everything turned out. Though we had some setbacks, I am so thankful that we were able to figure everything out and were able to finish everything. At first, getting used to animating for a longer film like this felt challenging. I had to go back to learning some of the basics I had forgotten and looked up several tutorials, but in the end I was able to figure out most of the things I wanted to learn.
I had some difficulties with the timings of each sequence, though they seemed to be only there when I exported the file, so I’m assuming it was a technical issue I couldn’t figure out just yet. Had it happened earlier than now, I would’ve reached out to ask for help. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the final product.
I still have a long way to go, but throughout all of this I was able to find a new blooming interest for 2D. I always loved it, but getting to do something like this truly made me want to do it more, even during my freetime. Now, I can’t wait to have this submitted and be able to animate more on my own and enter the third year with more knowledge than before. Definitely a fun, althogh tedious, project!
Special thanks to Samael for also being a great working partner and always being fun to discuss things with.
