JEANNE D'ARC

Final product of 10 weeks of work - a complete, animated short of 30 seconds. All work is done by me except for the music (which was taken from incompetech.com).

Below are the character turnaround sheet, a rough turnaround of the dress Joan wears at the end, and a final color study that I referenced to create the color palette in the Toon Boom Harmony scenes.

The goal of the project was to make a 30-second long animated film from start to finish in 10 weeks, using only your own manpower. I started with the concept of Joan of Arc, and a short animation representing the high and low of her short life.

To the left and below are sketches I made exploring what I wanted the character and elements to look like. I gave Joan short hair that looked like it had been cut unevenly by a knife or sword, and proportions that are inspired by animation done at the French Gobelins school of animation.

To the left are the final storyboards, later put together into an animatic, drawn in Storyboard Pro. Tweaks were made between the boards and the final animation, as is wont to happen.

Below are tests of color keys. I chose to go with a variation of the center color scheme. The idea behind it was that Joan's skin and hair are warm colors that match with the colors of the French countryside. Then, in the panning transition, the colors that were originally present in Joan's army uniform now make up the English fort that is the site of her execution.

Above and to the left are layouts used in the film. For the layouts of the French countryside, I painted the originals in pieces with watercolors, then scanned them in and adjusted the colors to match my final color key. I then put all of the pieces together in Photoshop.

For the layouts of the carriage and English fort, I drew them all in charcoal on watercolor paper to get that nice grain. After that the process was much the same.

By creating the layouts in pieces, I was able to create a sense of distance with parallax in the long pan shot of the French countryside.