Losing Nemo

ROLE

Art Director, Storyboard Artist, Character Animator

DESCRIPTION

Mr. Lee / Douwe.works was asked to produce a short animation to improve awareness of the substantial environmental danger of overconsuming sea live to a broad online audience. Emphising the links between the fish industry, consumers and political lobbyist.

I worked on the art direction, visually overseeing character and set development and worked on the storyboard. I worked in a large team of creatives on this pro-bono initiative, for about 3 months.

PROJECT DURATION

2013

CREDITS

Client: The Black Fish

Directed by: Douwe van de Werf

FORM

2D/3D animated short 6'55"

LINK TO FILM

You can watch the film Vimeo here.

Popping the dream

The mission for this project was to inform the public, companies and institutions of the dire strain (over)fishing the oceans has on the ecosystem. Instead of just presenting dry data on this, we tried to make it felt. By on one hand present the idealised idea many still have about the ocean and fishing, and then also give a sense of what fishing on an industrial scale stands for.

Going to the sea

In the idealised section I went for a very appealing colour palette

Fish is fun

Concepts like these really helped to visualise what a romantic view of fish might entail

Small boats, loads of sealife

Experimenting with a above and below presentation

The romantic fisherman

Bright and colourful. Very fun to conceptualise.

Storyboard exerpt

Here I've drawn how fish can easily escape a net in the romantic version

Sea look

The look of the sea done in very basic shapes

Sea life concept

And here it's more fleshed out in a concept drawing

shape guide

How to dress the 3D I made this shape guide to help out.

Fishy details

Art direction is sometimes noticing details like this.

The dark side of the coin

For the reality of large industrial scale fishing we tried to show how indifferent and removed the practices can be, and how horrific it must be from the perspective of ocean life.

Storyboard exerpt

Another example from the storyboard I've drawn where you see how large modern fishing vessels are far removed from the romantic idea of fishing.

Concept look

Visual development of the look of the fishing trawler.

Concept net

Here I tried to visualise the scale of the modern nets and get close to the fish anguish.

Captain look

Visual development of the fishing captain, it should look more like an office job these days, so I gave him a cup of coffee.

3D feedback

Having cartoony and realistic characters in the same animation takes some art directional fine tuning to match.

Final look

The final 3D in the film. I'm quite happy with how close the end result is to the proposed look.

Concept industry

Concept drawing I made to show the massive industrial scale to fish consumption most people don't really think of when they buy a piece of fish in the supermarket

Fish 3D add

Here I added suggested detail in Photoshop (lower image) to a basic 3D render (top image)

Factory 3D add

Here I added suggested detail in Photoshop (lower image) to a basic 3D render (top image)

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