Falling

Falling is a simple, yet relatable moving image to portray how I feel at this current point in time of the semester – in this case, I feel like I’m endlessly falling and I have not had the time to breathe or stop. This GIF was inspired by Alice in Wonderland where Alice falls down the rabbit hole. I intended to use a single colour of blue to convey the emotion of melancholy as well, hence why I decided to illustrate this in a monochromatic colour scheme.

Technical Processes

Photoshop

I initially illustrated the girl in Photoshop, where I separated each limb and part of her body into different layers for the animation process later on.

I then attempted a technique called boiling, where I illustrated three incredibly similar, yet different backgrounds. This is so to create a more dynamic effect, as shown in the GIFs below. I also used the same technique for the motion lines.

Boiling technique (background)

Boiling technique (motion lines)

After Effects

After illustrating, I brought everything into After Effects layer by layer. Here was where I made full use of the Puppet tool to animate the wind blowing against her clothes and hair. The example below are the pins I placed on the girl’s left leg. As I wanted to mimic wind, I duplicated multiple key frames and placed them near each other so it would look like her pants was moving rapidly due to the wind.

Once I repeated those steps for each body part, I then proceeded to move the girl’s body via the Position tool. Below is an example of how I positioned the keyframes for the action of her falling body.

Lastly, I felt that there could have been some colour adjustments to the entire composition, hence I created a new adjustment layer, where I used Lumetri colour, as well as brightness and contrast, and sharpen.

Before colour adjustments

After colour adjustments

Artist References

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland has been a huge part of my childhood, hence when I thought about creating a moving image of me endlessly falling, I immediately thought of the scene where Alice falls down the rabbit hole. I took note of how her hair and outfit flew as she fell so as to better gauge how to draw my character.

Oamul Lu

I was fascinated at the simplicity of Oamul Lu’s GIFs, especially in this series I Found A Star. Once again, I studied how they achieved the effect of motion and falling through th simplest details like how the clothing moves against the wind and simple animations in the background using the boiling technique.

Kevin Lucbert

 

I was interested in creating a monochromatic visual, where I made use of the colour blue to invoke feelings of melancholy. Kevin Lucbert’s works in Blue Lines and Blue Lines II really stood out to me as he made of the colour blue in every single drawing in these series. While I don’t feel any form of sadness or melancholy in these works, I definitely felt a sense of calm, which I’m sure has got to do with the psychology of colour. As I usually work with a myriad of colours, I decided to challenge myself to stick to a single colour to create a visual.

Final

Alternate Colour Variation

Video