Widescreen.

I'm working at the PAL D1/DV Square Pixel standard dimensions 788px x 576px. But i want a widescreen style shape. So i've added in White blocks at the top and bottom of the screen like you might see in black in film, giving that ultra widescreen vibe.

788px x 576px with white rectangles top and bottom

Effects.

experimentation with effects.

Untitled from James Smith on Vimeo.

Hand drawn/photoshop/illustrator.

I did a trial run of hand drawing my images, but quickly decided it was way too time consuming for what i'm trying to do. Also I don't want my animation to be quite as jumpy say Steamboat Willie, but not quite as sharp as Motomichi Nakamura's animations. So i've decided to hand draw my image, then scan to Illustrator and then create each frame using Photoshop. Here's a quick test i did for the first scene.

I've also tried to apply a lens flare kind of effect but only to the black line, i think it make quite an interesting style.

Lomography

I'm pretty into the whole lomography style prints lately. I want to introduce a film burn feel to my cells. Here's some real nice examples i found a while back in the 10deep summer lookbook. 

Tyler the creator

I've been watching all kinds of different videos by all kinds of videographers and animators for inspiration. What i like about this music video is the naive style of the camera being out of focus quite often, and thought that may be an interesting effect to try and apply to my animation. In keeping with this vintage, slightly messy style I'm trying to achieve.

Steamboat Willie

I was torn for a while between cell animation and animating purely using after effects. I think the style most fitting for what i want to do is cell animation, as i want to achieve and old silent movie, flickery style. I like the real old vintage style of things like Disney's Steamboat Willie, and want to re-create that feel.

Motomichi Nakamura

This animation by Nakamura was a pretty big source of inspiration for me when i was in the story boarding phase. I like the simplicity and bold shapes used. Which gave me the idea of using real simple shapes such as equilateral triangles, circles and droplet shapes in my own animation.

We Share Our Mothers Health » By Motomichi Nakamura from The Knife on Vimeo.