Shortcuts: Between walls
Between Walks, a strikingly stark and strangely beautiful short, created by students at The Animation Workshop, evokes a unique visual world
Discover how students at The Animation Workshop created this unique animation
Mellem Vaeggene (Between Walls) was made by a team of students at the Danish school, The Animation Workshop. The short focuses on a father-daughter relationship; where childhood innocence and creativity are represented by the white birds, and self-doubt and creative blocks are represented by black birds. The lack of colour in the short and the masterful staging work really caught our eye, and contribute to the conflict, creating a unique mood and tone. We caught up with director, Sara Jespersen Holm, to ask her more about the short’s technical aspects and influeneces: “Stylistically we were inspired by theatre and especially by late Czech stage designer Josef Svoboda. We loved his grand yet simple set designs. We wanted to contrast the surreal world with the down to earth and bleak social realistic Danish cinema.”
What was the hardest job?
I think the hardest job was being able to understand the CG pipeline. There were many unforeseen challenges and because we were students we were constantly learning by trying, failing and trying again.
Can you talk us through your pipeline?
Our main software was Maya, which is the standard at the school for CG work. Maya was used for modelling, rigging, light set up, animation and so on. The black birds were fully rigged from scratch by our technical director Casper and given a flat shader so they would appear 2D. Our art director Sara worked a lot with Photoshop for her concept work and later for matte paintings. For the 2D animation of the white birds we used Tvpaint and used a very painterly brush to contrast with the sharpness of the black birds. Mari was used for texturing. We sculpted the characters in Zbrush and for compositing we used Nuke. For production management we used Shotgun, which is a great tool for keeping track of the overall plan and deadlines. The film was edited in Premiere Pro.
What was the most impressive technical aspect and how was it achieved?
The entire set was built on a rotating platform in Maya. The set was simple; it was created out of walls that were turned towards the camera on different rotating rings. Whenever we wanted the walls to move we simply rotated the desired ring. This way the walls would always stay with the front towards the camera and we would easily be able to change the set and arrange the walls. By setting it up like this, we could easily work with different staging possibilities until very late in the pipeline with the camera and edit locked.
What lessons did you learn?
Being a student production we all had different skills and had to learn as we developed the film. This meant that there were many parts of the process that we simply did not know about and therefore had a hard time planning. It felt like we were always a week behind, but this forced us to keep trying to simplify where possible.
What’s next for you?
By setting it up like this, we could easily work with different staging possibilities until late in the pipeline with the camera and edit locked
I’m working on my next short, Spectrum, at Open Workshop in Viborg. It will be a mixed-media project with elements of live action with green screen, 2D animation and set extension with matte paintings. Sara Aunbirk will also be the art director on this project and we will actually be building on the visual look of Mellem Vaeggene. Watch Between Walls online at www.vimeo.com/154990348