Fairytale Ending: Research - Colours and Design

So over the summer I decided to do a little research into environment design and just basic composition and layouts of an art of, focusing on general things to consider when designing backgrounds and props. 

To do this I decided to look at the Art of Tangled (2010). I focused on how they approached the same aesthetic and vibe I am going for with my short film, in this case bringing the nostalgic whimsical style of older Disney-esc classics into a 3D world. This was especially helpful as similar to me, the creators of Tangled looked towards past influences such as Mary Blaire who was one of the biggest influences on my film.

Doing this has really helped me find my own way of approaching how I want to visually develop the film in terms of environment design, and considering the types of shapes I could potentially use to convey a certain idea.  

Although I really want to focus on my character design and character animation, I feel I should step out of my comfort zone and really explore character within the environment around her, something which was definitely inspired from this research.

Below are some of the notes I made while looking through the book, most of them are looking at different ways of presenting art work, as well as doing some studies of the props from the film, along with layout. (I also doodled a few drawings of Rapunzel from Glen Keanes sketches.)

This also gave me a new idea for where to set my story. Originally I set Dorotha's home within a tree trunk, however I really struggled to figure out how this would work. Then I thought instead of putting her home at the bottom of the tree, why not the top. Similar to a tree house, but a bit more mature and homely. These sketches will probably be in the next post where I elaborate more. 

Following on from this, I did also take a break in the summer and ended up playing on my DS Lite. Although this seems off topic, its here I stumbled across my old Enchanted (2007) game. Enchanted is in many ways similar to both Tangled in that it aims to achieve the same classic Disney whimsy yet from a more modern stand point. The colours from the game really stood out to me, and inspired me to create a colour palette for my film, so that all the colours could work together nicely. This game also made me think a lot about the use of colour when setting a mood for each scene, having them contrast in order to show conflict within a character, something I definitely want to consider when lighting my film.