Premise Research: Investigating Love Death + Robots
As inspiration for my project, I watched the series called Love Death + Robots. Love Death + Robots is a digitally animated anthology series which spans genres and explores ideas represented by the title. The stories are dominated by their striking art styles, which help lead the direction and themes of the animated short. I watched a few episodes which seemed relevant to my project, focusing on how the story is told, how characters are designed and how the world is presented to offer additional insight for the story.
Set in an early 20th century China, Good Hunting follows the two main characters, Laing and Yan, as they experience the rapid development of technology. This idea is reflected between the characters, showing how technology has effected them differently in both a positive and negative light.
The character Laing comes from a traditional Chinese family as shown at the beginning portion of the animation. His father is very set in his ways and known as a spirit hunter, someone who deals with magic which is a prominent part of the world at the beginning of the story. The animation starts with Laing and his father hunting down Yan's mother, who is a Huli Jing, a shapeshifting fox-like spirit. After dealing with the spirit, Laing learns a valuable lesson that people, such as his father, aren't always right and its good to have an open mind about the world. After his fathers death, the world is beginning to change with the development of trains in Laing's country. He specifically mentions how he is glad his father passed before technology reached the point it had as he would not be able to understand the direction of the world, given his traditional ways. Laing moves from his home town to work in Hong Kong to become a train engineer. Although he is treated badly by the people, he is very skilled with machinery and quickly comes to appreciate its uses. As time goes on his skills with machinery develop along with technology in the world.
Yan is a Huli Jing like her mother and is spared when Laing hides her from his father. Yan conflict with technology is more prominent as the overproduction of smoke in the air is causing the existence of magic to grow weaker in the world. With the use of technology being much more viable in the world, it gets to the point where Yan can no longer turn into her Huli Jing form and is instead forced to live her life as a human. Having nothing left apart for her looks, she lives her life as a prostitute, until she comes across a client who tears away her body and replaces it with technology. Having nothing but hatred left for man as her world has been ruined by technology, she returns back to Laing and asks him to help reclaim the world from man using "machines as their new magic". He forges her a new body which allows her to return to her old self and uses it to reclaim her land.
Technology is proven to show the both the rise and downfall for both characters. Its effects are shown in the directions both the characters lives takes after its conclusion in their society. As the animation is presented as snippets of their lives, the viewer is able to see the rapid development of technology in a short period of time. I tried to capture this idea by the images below. I really like the contrast between the animation at the beginning to the end, showing how once countryside has been turned into a smoke filled metropolis. The ideas presented in this animation are very similar as to how I want to portray my animation. I found it useful to see someone else's interpretation of the idea in a much longer format (animation 17 mins). I want to use the visual side of the animation as reference for my own, showing how technology has changed the culture.
Fish Night
I decided to watch this episode solely for its cell shaded art style. I wanted to see how it worked within a production as it is a style I was looking at for my own animation.
This animation is very stripped back and character focused. This mean that for most of the environment objects close to the camera were 3D and then as it moved out there was a matte painting. As the matte painting was the same art style as the rest of the world, the transition is seamless. The painting also strips back on its detail in order to put more focus on what is important, the characters, and to emphasis the story takes place in the middle of nowhere.
The idea for this animation is that ghosts haunt houses, so why don't creature haunt the environment they used to live in? After the two characters car breaks down, they experience this phenomenon for themselves. During the night ghosts of passed sea creatures appear showing that their spirit still remains.
I really like how the art style lends itself to the story, making use of its vibrant colours to show the heat of the desert and to illuminate the fish spirits.
Ice
After watching Zima Blue, I found that their was another animation which uses the same art style in season 2. I wanted to see how this art style would lend itself to a different environment.
This short story is set on a frozen planet in which humans have inhabited after the destruction of Earth. Many of the inhabitants are genetically modified, allowing them to do things .The main story follows two brothers and the rift that has formed between them after one is modded and the other one is normal. Being less impressive than his brother, he wants to prove that he is just as capable.
I felt this art style really worked with the themes of this animation. As a viewer you can really see how harsh the planet looks for the characters. Where Zima Blue was more character driven, I liked how this animation was focused more on the environment. By spending time developing every aspect of the world, the peoples houses, their streets, their marketplace and place of work, it really sold the idea that man has colonized a new planet. I also found that the silhouettes worked better for this animation as it allowed the world to be presented in a harsher way, with the violent snow as well as displaying scale of the characters in comparison to the world.
After some additional research I found that the animation artist is called Robert Valley. I want to look more at his other work as I like his unique style.
https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+valley&rlz=1C1CHBD_en-GBGB788GB788&sxsrf=APq-WBvQETuodUpFvGDQTGDu_ojIyr6xhg:1644257199564&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFh7Kyl-71AhXIesAKHc4EBXEQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&cshid=1644257233391055&biw=1745&bih=852&dpr=1.1
Blind spot
This story centred around a group of cyborgs as they attempted a train heist in order to acquire microchips. Very little is actually described about the world and instead it is up to the viewer to look at the characters and environments in order to paint a picture.
I really like the models used to create the characters. They are all unique and fit the characters personality really well. This is important to convey as it is a short story and their is not enough time to tell each of the back stories for each character. Although the story is simple it is able to focus in on what the important parts are, making an animation which is interesting to watch and easy to follow. This is the sort of thing I want to convey in my own animation.
From researching the animations it has allowed me to see the importance of art-styles. By leaning in to the art-style, it allows you to create a world which is believable for the intended story. I was worried that the premise of my animation did not make sense, however after watching Love Death + Robots it has shown me that your story can be about anything as long as its presented in a suitable way to the audience.
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