'Junk Boy' Visual Development; 3d/2d Hybrid Style

Whilst brainstorming my story idea I had always assumed that if I made it I'd make it in 2d, being the medium I am most familiar with. However the more I thought about it the more I realized that this story would come with it's challenges if hand drawn. Namely, it involves a lot of mechanics, robots, planes, bikes etc. I find these things difficult to draw, let alone animate. I think it would be difficult to animate these things well, keeping their form and weight, making them appear solid and consistent, they're also quite visually complex just by nature so even as a time saving measure it seemed sensible to think about the possibility of 3d animation.

However the aesthetic of the film was something very important for me and in my idea of what 3d animation looks like I couldn't visualize what I wanted to put on screen. So I started brainstorming some ideas of how to implement 3d whilst achieving the visual tone that I wanted. I actually think in the end I much prefer how the film may hypothetically look using these techniques rather than all hand drawn. Below are some rough sketches of the ideas I took away from my research into 2d/3d hybrid methods.

This first image shows very simply a cliff in the foreground rendered in 3d, the stage the character would occupy. But the background is a 2d hand drawn painting. This is to maintain the texture I want overall in the film, and I think it'd be an interesting look having the background very clearly drawn. I believe this idea is actually quite common as a time saving practice in 3d
modelling, we were taught it last year in our 3d background module, using a jpeg as a texture on a large plane behind the actual scene to create a backdrop for the setting. I also find it interesting that it is essentially the matte painting technique from live action film being used in a digital setting.

One bullet point in this image notes 'low poly models with painted textures', again this is partly a time saving method on the modelling end and an aesthetic choice. I think the hand drawn look is very important to me for this film idea, having it looking almost like an ink sketch, with loose pen marks and heavy black lines. And I think having that sort of look in the textures with high poly count could potentially be jarring because with high detail in the model you'd expect the same with texture, even with a stylized model. I think it would work as an aesthetic choice, one really big inspiration for this visual style is the game 'Tiny and Big; Grandpas Leftovers', on the image on the right you can see a lot of what I'm talking about here in practice. This is very close to the aesthetic I am looking for. The geometry is fairly basic but it has a lot of appeal as a design due to the charming hand drawn textures.

Another trick I came across was in a recent trailer for the new Spiderman movie, which contains endless visually inspiration but this method stuck out in particular for what I was looking for. It appears that frames have been cut from the animation to make it appear closer to not fully inbetweened 2d animation which is very effective and something I would've never have thought of. It does an excellent job of blending the 2d and 3d elements into a cohesive style, rather than being jarring. I also really like the painted textures, in general I'd like my film to move and look a similar way to this film.

This sketch demonstrates one of the more obvious aspects of the style, I'd like to animate the special effects aspects in 2d and the models in 3d. I want to do this because I don't think it makes sense to do things like smoke and fire in 3d because the complications of giving it a hand drawn look becomes pointless when I can just animate these parts in 2d. In general I want quite a lot of additional animation, random particles and dust, the world reacting to what's happening within it. I think this helps sell the world as 'real', create a sense of verisimilitude. Even in excess, I'm quite inspired by the films of Jon Woo and the special effects utilized in his movies, particularly gunfights that make the scene feel very alive and gives it a unique energy. I think this would also help to blend the 2d and 3d elements more seamlessly if it was less obvious what was 3d, 2d or even post production.

I think this is my favorite of the tricks that I found during my research, having 2d animation for the faces of 3d characters. This trick can be seen in the image above of Tiny with his mouth and pupils, but is also used in the lego movie. I think it has a really charming look and also means that the actual facial animation is far less of an undertaking since it requires a lot less actual animation because the face only animates when it emotes, or blinks.