<@!699577798049923083> As you have said, i am someone who can help you with elevating the technical standard of your work, so that is what I will try to do here.
for Mary’s story
i can see quite a big disconnect between the drawing style of the face – which I understand has been drawn by someone else – and the drawings to the right of that face.
Maybe this is a good thing or maybe you want to unify them under a consistent style. You could perhaps commission the artist to make more sketches like that one? Or you could meet in the middle of the two styles?
Are you basing the styles of the people on the right on other community member’s drawing styles too?
In part 2 i notice the perspective of the landscape. The house currently sits on the horizon. In perspective this would suggest that the house is on the edge of a cliff or is a giant looming on the horizon. Either way, that there is no land behind the house. typically we “cut through” the house, or any object, with the horizon line.
Currently your lines have no pressure input for size or opacity. Whilst this is not wrong, it does reduce the amount of information you can communicate in a line. lines with pressure input feel more organic and give the artist greater control and ability to express with the line.
The drawing process of them forming is quite a nice touch. It might be a little controversial – one could see it as a bit of a gimmick or could see it as a callback to Windsor McCay. I wouldn’t dwell too long on the drawing part of it though, I would just have them form over half a second or less, then the rest be focussed on animation. The wonderful thing about animation is the illusion being played right in front of you. You can see that they are drawn imitations, but you can’t help empathizing with them.
I really love the kind of split screen / overlay of the close up and the long establishing shot. it communicates well that the character is recalling a memory or thought. I think after a bit of time spent on that composition, the audience would understand that and you can move away from that composition, having already established that this is in the character’s memory.
About the overlay of the face –
The best example i can think of with these kind of overlays is in Apocalypse now 1979. I’ll post a scene in <#695628377884721174> i can only find the intro montage on YouTube but there are more overlay montage sequences in other parts of the film like the riverboat making its way up river. very different thematically from yours but you can extract the techniques.
In the shot which follows this one, you could take the face out, and have something like a watercolour fade vignette around the frame, which would still communicate it as being imaginary or from memory. That would give you back the full frame to play with.
Disney’s Bambi has some unfathomably beautiful production artwork – the whole film is a piece of art – like it belongs in a gallery
<@!699577798049923083> There is a great animated mini-documentary I think you would like called A is for Autism 1992 by Tim Webb. A real landmark achievement of animation. It assembles hundreds of drawings made by autistic young people, then Tim Webb (and I think a small team of animators?) fleshed out the drawings into frame by frame animation. It is quite extraordinary as the faithful interpretation of the drawings give a window into the special minds of these autistic children. The way he interprets the interview soundbites is just fantastic. I’m sure he has done other projects you would like too.
https://youtu.be/cPR2H4Zd8bI
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