Brief E
my initial thoughts and research: pool liminal spaces
AS SOMEONE WHO ALREADY TAKES A HUGE INTEREST IN LIMINAL SPACES, I WAS VERY EXCITRED FOR THIS PROJECT. MY FIRST THOUGHTS JUMPED TO MY OWN SPACES WHICH WOULD MOST LIKELY INCLUDE WATER. I LOVE THE LONLINESS AND UNNERVING PARTS THAT COME FROM LIMINAL SPACES, ESPECIALLY ONES THAT INCLUDE THESE TYPES OF POOL ROOMs. I KNEW I WOULD Want TO INCLUDE WATER SO I BEGAN LOOKING THROUGH LIMINAL SPACES THAT HAD JUST THAT, WATER AND REFLECTION.
images like this interest me in ways i feel like i cant explain sometimes. and i think that is what is so enticing about liminal spaces, there's a sense of nostalgia even though I've never been to those places. i love the lighting uses i enjoy how lonely they feel and the images i found here both feel serene and give a vibe that can not be explained, however fear and unnerve sits alongside that solitude. this type of vibe can only be created in mysterious spaces like this - places that only the mind can really think of, hence why it would be perfect for a mind space.
video inspiration.
images alone cannot convey the sense of unnerve that liminal spaces can create. sometimes a small backing of strange sounds, or mysterious narration goes a long way into creating this fearful yet attractive loneliness, what is hiding there? are you truly alone? should you be here?
questions barrel inside your mind whether you're conscious of it or not. this is a place i would like to see if i can create.
something as little as what really is, slideshows of images alongside unnerving sounds can really create that sense of loneliness that I'm looking for.
these videos are found under the tags of #liminalspaces on Tiktok
hiroshi nagai
so how do artists use liminal spaces in their work?
as far as it goes it seems as if liminal spaces are still a quite niche, only a select few of artists from the past and to this date mess around with it in their work. and one supposes what is a liminal space is up to the viewer in certain cases. Nagai's work to me classes under that liminal space world due to the colour, lighting composition and how no humans are present. its very lonely yet inviting and it always includes water in some form which i what I've been looking for.
Giorgio de Chirico
one of the older liminal spaces artists, as the works created by chirco surfaced in around the early 1910s when the term of liminal spaces was first coined by Arnold van Gennep, a French ethnographer. the surreal and strange content is what encompasses a type of liminal space especially the lighting. all around his works are bizarre and for that i love them.
ferdinanda florence
to me Florence knows it out the park with her liminal work. the media she uses has a grungy and misty look to it creating the vibe that the areas are crowed in a sense of mystery which is what liminal spaces are all about. truly beautiful and very inspiration for my work going forward.
my personal favourite pieces of liminal work.
WHEN LOOKING FOR Setting in particular THESE TWO WERE MY FINAL FAVOURITES. THE ONE ON THE right IS ALOT MORE UNNERVING AND HAS AN ALIEN TYPE OF VIBE TO IOT, WHERE ASD THE ONE OF THE LEFT HAS MORE HOPE TO IT. SO WHAT IF I PUT THESE TWO DESIGNS OF AREAS TOGETHER?
messing with medias
here i decided to use inks to draw around my favourite liminal spaces to get a real feel for the tones. i felt like inks or water colours could best encompassed the vibe of the liminal space that was to be created. using what I've learnt from the artists id looked at this is how i came about these paintings
collaboration.
here comes the meat of this project. after a few weeks into research and designing ideas for where to take this project it was decided between my friend and i, that we would come together to create a animation and collaborate for this project.
i would be working together with my friend Jack bartlam if looking at his side of the work is needed his website link will be here: https://jackbartlam.myportfolio.com/
when thinking on ideas together our first decision was to make that of an animation about a boy going through his struggling mental heath and its decline due to his past traumas, and that the main setting would be inside his headspace where he keeps going to escape his memories.
jacks work consists of more abstract and background pieces were as mine is usually along the lines of character creation, so it was though that between us we could create something whole with both of our expertise put together.
for reference here's one of jacks more recent pieces, his style usually consists of colour washes and pattern
finalizing a basic character design
SO I STARTED BY DESGING OUR MAIN CHARACTER.
along with who he is, why he acts and dresses the way he does, and what his backstory is.
IT GOES LIKE THIS, OUR MAIN CHARACER, aIDAN, HAD A ROUGH UPBRINGING FAMILY AND SCHOOL WISE. HE WAS NOT WELL OFF, INFACT HIS FAMILY STRUGGLED PUTTING FOOD ON THE TABLE MOST DAYS.
with a rough home life aidan meets HIS BEST FRIEND, Oliver at the age of six. when aidan defended Oliver from some bullies at school.
aIDAN IS A QUIETSPOKEN PERSON AND WILL NOT MAKE AN EFFORT TO BEGIN CONVERSATION IF HE DOESNT NEED TO. HE ENJOYS SILENCE AND THEN SOON ON ALSO Enjoys THE SOUND OF WHATEVER OLIVER BEGAN TO TALK ABOUT.
THE TWO NEVER FOUGHT.
THEY LIVE IN A TOWN NEAR AN OCEAN FRONT THAT was rarely used for tourism, SO THE TWO MADE IT THEIR MAIN HANG OUT SPOT, it was their safe place.
OLIVERs family didn't suffer from financial issues like aidans, but Oliver also did not get along with them.
THE STORY IN NO WAY NEEDS TO EXPLAIN THIS BUT ID LIKE TO THINK THE TWO PERHAPS WHERE A LITTLE Romantically INVLOVED, OLIVER HAD VERY GREAT AFFEECTION FOR AIDAN. as far as character backstory that's as in-depth as i felt i needed to go.
aidan in this design should be around 17 to 18 , including the fact he's very malnourished and barely eats or takes care of himself. the boy is too far in his trauma regression and depression to do so.
as far as oliver's design goes, he wont be present in many frames but its still an important character to have properly in detail. he should look a lot younger than aidan because here Oliver is still fourteen.
oliver's back story i thought of as more simple, hes a weak looking kid who prefers art over sports and such has a pretty rough relationship with his parents as they expect so much from him. he tries at times to understand when aidan complains about his family, but the differences are so strong that he struggles to give the best advice and so this is the one thing that really gets on aidans nerves. which is an important plot point.
i wanted him to look more nerdy and pathetic to combat the much more scruffy look aidan has.
oliver always brings a new canvas to pain with when him and aidan visit the ocean because he loves painting so much, and most of the time pains the ocean infront of him, including ocean in the image every time.
primary research
these images are from Sherwood forest, jack and i wanted to get out and get a feel for the sounds and vibes of solitude in nature. which is what we want to create with the main liminal space.
more primary research
our main space for the animation is that of the ocean front and horizon, so i dragged my boyfriend out to visit Scarborough for real life images to use for a reference along with the sounds and vibes of an actual ocean front. always windy.
this is a video i took walking home by the ocean, we ended up using as our main ocean sound effects in the final animation.
actual story plan.
here began our really rough storyboarding plans
after really understanding our characters backstories and such, we made our story much more concrete.
so as follows, our main character, aidan, hasn't seen his best friend since he was fifteen. the two of them got into a fight because of aidans bad temper and such the two fell out for the first time. aidans outburst in this situation caused Oliver to run away in sadness however aidan didn't realise hed then never see the boy again after that.
the real answer as to where Oliver went is up for interpretation, the worst case scenario i came up with is that unrelated after this argument Oliver was killed or died by some outside influence. or that he just disappeared to who knows where. all that matters is the cause of him leaving in that moment was due to aidans actions. since that aidan has blamed himself for olivers disappearance and the memory became to painful to bare that the guilt and tragedy that followed ate away at him until he forgot about it.
now in real time aidan has barely any memories of his past due to bottling up his emotions for so long. the actual animation takes us to his head space, the same ocean he and oliver always hung out at however this ocean should be slightly off, and too barren. it needs to be known that were in his head.
aidan then whilst in his headspace will be haunted little by a silhouette of Oliver, the representation of all his repressed memories and feelings. the silhouette will make contact with him and take us into the emotional outburst of their fight including a lot of abstract emotion. it will end with aidan beginning to drown, he will then be pulled out the water by the silhouette and he will wake up on the ocean front without the black square in the sky, and then he will sit up and begin to look out over the ocean again, but in the real world
the story's clear moral is that everyone makes mistakes, and you yourself can be more hard on you, than anyone else. yes aidans short temper caused his friend to disappear, but how could he have known that at the time?
its no fair blaming yourself for something like a mistake when you could have neve known what could've come after that. it isn't the cause just an unfortunate reason. accepting your guilt and innocence together is imperative to live with yourself again, and you cant hide in your mind forever, blame will eat you alive.
sillohette designs
silhouette represents Oliver and his memory, but only when it comes closer to aidan does the silhouette more represent his design rather than just a stick figure.
some pose work from going to a live drawing class
finished storyboard sketch
so i then sketched out the full storyboard to understand framing and the way the whole animation will look.
more finalised and in-depth story board.
animation inspiration- omocat
omocat and her game omori has been a massive inspiration to me for my entire 3rd year, i loved the game story, art, game play, and animation so much that i think it will always been an inspiration to me for the rest of my life. the boiling effect and the style of characters with muted emotions really speaks to me and i think shows itself in my work very much. i will always be thankful for the experience this game gave me and it will show in my art for my entire working life.
early animation tests
this was simply playing with using boiling, for small movements along with planning out the needed wind effects on aidans hair. this is a digital version i have plans to also try this with stopmotion and paper.
the importance of colour in my work.
fully animating it was important to understand the use of colour within our work and how it would convey certain emotions along with explaining itself.
within films colours dont always have to follow any rules, however most do follow some rules, as shows above. it does depend on what's happening in the work along with how that colour might convey an emotion different to the norm but there is a basic rule of thumb with its use. and as far as I'm aware red is most always attributed to anger in most situations that include colour. so when i was deciding on aidans colour palette and when jack had started designing his abstract part of the animation we collectively wanted to add red to aidans muted colour palette of monochrome. its a easy way to show even though the boys emotions are stagnant in this moment in time, that anger that caused the fight to begin with has sat and festered with him over the years. better yer demonstrating that memories as important as that will not go away on their own no matter how are you try.
and the same goes for the small appearances of Oliver, i decided to use the same monochrome idea but with the addition of green, the known immature and hopeful colour in certain cases. it also being the complementary colour to red perfect sits him as the polar opposite of aidan and his red.
i used the site:
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/
to better my knowledge on this.
jack's work at this point.
its important to get an understanding of the types of medias and works that jack creates to better hope that my own work can compliment, and contrast well together.
so it was time i also started testing how my animating would look, and what media i should do my character in. i decided on trying ink first similar to the ink pieces i had created before. this was an arduous effort however, with the boiling effected we wanted this would require every frame to be painted in its entirety 3 times, and doing this with traditional painting would require perfect tracing which was a very difficult task.
after realising just how difficult and time costing this method would be, considering the plan was to use jacks backgrounds cutting out the character from the white background from every frame would also be difficult and time worthy- so i decided to see if i could try to make an ink type effect with digital.
so here is a character type sheet of aidan with his new colour palette and ink digital design.
the beginning of the animating process.
as drawn from inspiration of the liminal spaces i researched, jacks first part of the animation is this look on the ocean horizon. it includes that black box that is meant to represent the entrance to this head space. its not real. he created this with colour washes then boiling them over one another.
aidan is then introduced via the back of his head. really this choice was just to slowly show that he's also looking at this bizarre door in the middle of the ocean horizon and it not phased by it. as if he's extremely used to it.
i first sketched then outlined and finished with colouring on digital, i did this three times to create that boiling feel, no frame is the same as the other as i also wanted to animate the hair in wind as the ocean front is very much involved with wind. this process usually took me around 2 to 3 hours to however some frames were a lot more complicated so at times i cant really say how long they would take me.
the next frame has a few iterations, from my coloured version to the two different backgrounds jack made, one is the first version with colour and the other i simply the cleaner version.
we used such vibrant colours in these frames to demonstrate that were not in the real world. without a clear establishment of where the light comes from yet its still so vibrant makes little sense if we were to be in the real world. along side how it contrasts with aidan this all comes together to create a strange vibe of confusion and hopefully gets across to the watcher that aidan is not in reality.
this frame is to show that something off screen has caught aidans attention.
are the side by sides of my animated aidan with and without the background. the silhouette is far in the distance to create that confusing and unnerving vibe. as its so far away in aidans mind.
the ocean front is aidans safe place and yet is also the birth place of his altercation with Oliver. so after the fact the only memories he has of this place is actually being alone there. he's repressed this memory so well all it can manifest as is a strange shadow at the back of his mind. quite like how many people struggling with trauma would explain it. something has to trigger its rebirth and for aidan its the fact his headspace is shared with that of the place his trauma also comes from.
the animated form of my drawing of the silhouette
here is my animation of aidan from after, then put into the main animation. we see him from the figures POV so the colours are little stranger in the final version as were not seeing it from the usual perspective.
this frame is to demonstrate that aidan at first is more confused than afraid. he's never seen anything else in this headspace for the many years he's escaped reality to be here. we simply see the wind still blowing in his hair and his lost expression.
again using the same process of sketching him out, outlining it then colouring each individual frame differently.
this frame then is from aidans pov to show how the sillhoette slowly closes in on him and very quickly appears directly in front of him which as seen in th next framke startles him
i wanted to show how aidan can still experience unfortunate emotions. he does feel happy of relaxed anymore but he can still be scared and fearful, which is what i tried to create by having his pupils which are usually just all black, now all white.
this part of the animation is where we transition into the abstract emotional conversation between Oliver and aidan. here it shows that the figure as a concept of a memory, all of a sudden consumes aidans very being.
if we were to look at this in real life its similar to a mental break down or a panic attack. one that is induced or triggered by a certain traumatic memory.
with trauma and ptsd sometimes the entire cause of the mental issue is due to a certain memory. for aidan, its his last conversation before he causes Oliver to disappear for the rest of his life.
if you think of the figure as a entity that represents this memory you can see how the animation is trying to explain that aidan is now going through something similar to a trauma induced mental break down as this memory comes flooding back to him in real time and like the entity is doing, consumes him. aidan is frightful as it happens and then we're taken into a situation that shows very vividly the conversation as if it was happening in real time.
this is another thing that people with trauma will experience when a Memory there so desperately trying to hide from, is triggered. they experience the memory as if they're reliving it.
in many cases they hear the memory, they can smell the memory ; all the five sense start working as if you're mind is putting you back in that place because what is needed to accept and get over trauma a lot of the time is to relive and right the wrongs of it.
essentially going through that experience again and controlling it along with controlling how you feel during it, allowing you to have better control in general over the trauma. this is what would happen perhaps for some people during therapy, you would be put you back in that memory but allow you to control it.
with aidans case he's alone reliving this trauma and doesn't understand what's happening to him, so all the memory is doing is causing him to suffer in this moment as we see the entire memory in perfect clarity.
a lot of the information i have gathered here is from my own experiences in therapy and what my therapist had taught me about accepting unwanted memories; this is how i came up with the storyboard for this part of the animation.
the memory portion.
during this part of the animation we flash between moments of my work and then jacks abstract work. going through the conversation and how the two boys looked during the memory. we used a filter to better explain this is taking place during the past.
we see how aidan and Oliver look at one another during the conversation. aidan standing taller and straighter to better show off his anger and how much more of a intimidating figure he looks to be rather than Oliver, who is a calm sense of colour, shorter and looks very fearful.
these are some screenshots of what jacks parts look like on photoshop, showing what is in-between the moments of my parts.
after reliving and going through the memory once again, our aidan is drained. mentally and physically. he cannot hold himself up and more and is now depicted laying with no effort in the waters he'd been looking at for the start of the animation. i made the red in his colour palette begin to fade with vibrancy as if the emotion of anger that had still been locked within him was now vanishing after going through that unwanted memory.
going through a mental breakdown induced by trauma is very, very tiring. its as tiring as working out for an entire day. so i wanted aidan to seem lifeless, the boys exhausted and at this point is pretty much giving up.
my works of aidan before the background colours of him falling
aidan, now exhausted and with little will power left. allows the water to take him. the trauma now has fully consumed him as the water is, he is now sinking and letting himself go.
my work on the frame before we added the water filters/
by this point aidan has fully given up on himself. with one last tear and show of emotion he closes his eyes ready to leave himself off to an eternal sleep. i muted the red fully at this point taking away every emotion he had left. hes been consumed by his own mind. hence falling even deeper into the water
however, the Silhouette, the memory of Oliver persists as within him trauma there's still so much positivity in the memories he had with Oliver before.
i drew the silhouette and we messed around in photoshop to create the effect that it was above the water.
the entity as it makes contact with aidan turns more human like and pulls him out of the water.
here was just due to me asking jack to animate his water wash to indicate to the watcher that between the frame before and after aidan has been taken out of the water.
in a small moment of bliss the positive memories of oliver fill through aidans mind and turns the entity representing oliver's memory into something more human, and they hold hands for a moment.
aidan then rapidly wakes in the real world. to indicate this i coloured him with a regular colour scheme and gave him green eyes. signifying that connection he still has with oliver as oliver has been represented with green for the whole animation.
he sits on that same beach, yet the black door has disappeared and the tones of the colour around him are less vibrant. its getting darker as the sun is finally setting and the lighting has been established unlike when we were in the headspace.
aidan is content after waking.
there is always hope to work yourself past trauma.
then the credits to me and jack roll signifying the end of the animation. the credits having being made fully b y jack.
how we put it all together
these images here are screenshots of how the animation looked in the soft ware we were using to everything together. at first i would send jack each of my frames as pngs, then he'd make up his backgrounds in photoshop and animate the whole scene together into a gif using photoshop timeline. then once the gif of the boiled frame WAS DONE HED UPLOAD IT HOWEVER MANY TIMES WE WanTED IT TO LOOP INTO DAVINCI ANIMATOR.
A LITTLE INTO HOW WE USED SOUND:
THE ANIMATION STARTS WITH A WHILE NOISE TYPE SOUND EFFECT WE FOUND THEN HAS A CONTINUOUS LOOP OF THE VIDEO I RECORDED BY THE BEACH TO KEEP THAT REAL FEEL TO IT. WE USED Royalty FREE LIMAL SPACE VIBES MUSIC FOR THE MEMORY PORTION TO KEEP THAT PART EVEN MORE UNIQUE TO THE REST OF THE ANIMATION AS THATS THE ONLY PART WITH MUSIC.
THEN SO ON USED SOUND EFFECTS ONELINE WE FOUND OF MOVING WATER, AND BEIGN UNDER WATER.
TO BETTER GET ACROSS THE TRANQUILITY OF THE END PIECE WE STOP THE LOOP OF THE WIND BY THE BEACH FRONT.
here's some photos of me and jack working hard on discord call, in person and working at the university building on this project together! we scheduled a lot of meet upS to animate the whole thing together.
first rough of animation
after showcasing the final animation to peers and tutors, we got some small feedback on places that could be changed including the size of the font in the conversation part and the size of the silhouette before it gets closer to aidan, so we messed around for a bit with the final proDUCT to create the best possible version of the animation.
I FEEL IT IMPOTANT TO SHOW THE VERY FIRST DRAFT VS THE LAST, TO DEMONSTARE HOW WE TOOK FEEDBACK ON BOARD TO BETTER THE ANIMATION.
so after all that hard work here is the final version of the animation:
real size aidan🥺
https://youtu.be/H2AZ0QKWm3k?si=e3FeNSqEZbvTZM_s
link to final piece better quality version on YouTube.
MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE PROJECT AS A WHOLE AND WHERE I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEE IT:
I THINK THIS PROJECT HAS TAKEN THE MOST OUT OF ME, MY TIME THIS YEAR HAS FELT DEVOTED TO THIS PROJECT AND SO I FEEL AS THOUGH MY OTHER PROJECTS PERHAPS SLIPPED DUE TO THE PRESSURE I HAD PUT ON MYSELF FOR PUTTING MY ALL INTO THIS PROJECT.
I LOVED IT, AND ITS ABSOLTUELY ONE OF MY MOST FAVOURITE FINAL PIECES IVE EVER CREATED, THE EXPERIANCE OF COLLAB WAS REALLY INSIGHTFUL AND I FEEL HAS REALLY IMPORVED MY ABILTY TO WORK WITH OTHERS ON SOMETHING AS BIG AND AMBITIOUS AS AN ANIMATION.
jack and i never experienced any issues with working together, we were never hard on one another to get things done, and both made sure to always fulfil our sides that had to be done.
THE FRAMES STARTED TAKING ME TIME TO CREATE BUT I DIDNT WANT TO MAKE THE STOARY BOARD SMALLER TO BETTER SUIT TIMINGS, I FELT IT WAS Important THE STORY STAYED HOW i IINTIALY DREW IT OUT AS TO FULLY GET ACROSS THE MESSAGE WE WANT TO TELL.
THE STORY IS ABOUT TRAUMA AND REPRESSING THAT TRAUMA, AND THE ISSUES THAT COME ALONG THE WAY. AS SOMEONE WHOS SUFFERED ALOT WITH SIMIALR THINGS TO AIDAN, I FELT IT WAS A SMALL PROJECTION OF MYSELF INTO THE WORDS OF THE STORY.
I KNOW MORE THAN ANYONE HOW Important IT IS TO CONFRONT THESE EMOTIONS AND MEMORIES HEAD ON, AND WHEN YOU DO THERE IS ALWAYS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL, ALWAYS A SUNSET ON THE BEACH.
AIDAN'S TRUAMA COMES FROM HIS PAST MISTAKES HOWEVER YOU CANNOT LET MISTAKES DEFINE YOU FOREVER, ITS imperative TO GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK AND FORGIVE YOURSELF. SUCH IS THE STEPS TO Recovery OR YOU'LL STAY HAUNTED BY THOSE MEMORIES UNTIL THEY CONSUME YOU, LIKE THE OCEAN HAD BEGUN TO DO TO AIDAN THROUGH OUT THE COURSE OF THE STORY.
IF I WANTED PEOPLE TO TAKE A MESSAGE FROM THIS WORK IT WOULD BE THAT, YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK, AND GIVING UP IS NEVER WORTH IT AS THE FUTURE WILL ALWAYS EXSIST AND THE PAST HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. ID LIKE SOMEONE TO FEEL GOOD AFTER WATCHING AND FEEL AS THOUGH THEY LEARNT SOMETHING.
I THINK THE WORK ITSELF COULD BE FINE AS A YOUTUBE VIDEO POPPING UP FOR PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THE STYLE AND STORY OR FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NEED TO SEE IT. it COULD ALSO BEEN SHOWN ON A SITE THAT WORKS ON BETTERING PEOPLE AND HELPS THEM WITH THEIR MENTAL HEALTH, I COULD SEE IT HAVING A PLACE THERE.
ALL IN ALL I LOVE THIS PIECE OF WORK AND I WILL FOREVER LOOK BACK ON IT FOR INSPIRATION.
the end
