Many animated features and “Live-Action” CG remakes of hand-drawn films strive for realism, but “Flow ”Director Gints Zilbalodis had another goal when creating the animals of animals Double Oscar -Nominated. Instead, it is naturalism – that represents the world mostly when we see it but leaves room for emotional flowers to transform a landscape or character design – like zilbalodis and his animation The team worked against.
Focused on a cat, which reluctantly ends up in the same boat as a set of other animals in the middle of a flooded world without human being in sight, “Flow“Gives us enticing clues about what the broader story is. Yet it never reveals what happens or what the characters are trying to communicate to each other – it is wrong to call this silent filmBut it is dialogue -free and discounts all cute cats and dogs and Lemur lets our animal comrades do. So it was meaningful for Zilbalodis that the animation would base us in reality, while we switched to the emotional stories of the foreground.
“I wanted it to feel engrossing so the world is quite detailed, but it is not hyperrealistic not only with the look, but also with the movement of the characters,” Zilbalodis told Indieviewer about the filmmaker Toolit podcast. “We studied real pictures of nature, but we interpret (them), and we only put details where it is really necessary, which is another tool for us to guide the audience.”
This does not only apply to the strange statues and attractive ruins that the film’s cat goes through on their quest to stay dry, but also character design. “I think the characters are less detailed than the environments because I think it makes them more appealing and allows us to drive the design a little more to make the feelings clearer and directly,” Zilbalodis said. “The audience can project their own experiences on the characters. They fill the design’s gaps. “
Part of creating an atmospheric design is to leave artifacts of a “human” touch, even when animators work on the computer. The spaces sometimes have visible brush strokes, and environments are designed to be tactile not in the sense that the audience feels like we can touch them, but in the sense that everything looks like it was done by a human hand. It is largely for each asset Where made by a human hand.
“We can’t take any ready -made things from any library or ask an artist to do something realistic. It is very easy to tell them to do something that is very objective, but when you have a more abstract or stylized style, everything must be designed and united with the rest of the world, ”said Zilbalodis.
A lightweight, and especially painter animation style is part of what Zilbalodis uses to pull the viewer in, but he also leans on the camera to guide us through the cat’s perspective, especially some ambitious long lasting. But this meant that Zilbalodis could not trust a cornerstone of animated story.
“We do not use storyboards because of the long ones. It is impossible to draw all perspective changes, ”said Zilbalodis. “I’m not really good at drawing. I can draw, but I’m very slow; So instead of storyboards, I basically start with Animatic, or it can be called Previz, and I create a rough version of the environment. “
Zilbalodis used the digital environment, which comes with some basic effects, in principle running a virtual site peer and calculating camera placement and motion for each shot. And while “flow” is definitely a team effort of a crew of Latvian and French animators, Zilbalodis wanted to see the light and adapt the environment to itself.
“It is important not to separate the lighting from the camera placement … I heard that on larger productions there are separate people who do these things, but I can’t imagine separating these,” Zilbalodis said. “How the camera moves can convey curiosity. It can convey fear. And for the most part, it’s the cat. It is very subjective. (And) With the long tags, the camera moves a lot, so there is editing within the shot. It is as in the camera edit in principle and it must be synchronized with the music. It must tell the story, but it is also very emotional. “
The work, how emotionally or fun it is, is also very open source code. Zilbalodis and his team used Blender, a 3D animation software available to everyone to download and for which countless Youtube tutorials are available. Which was important, since Zilbalodis and especially his Latvian crew learned and leveled at work.
“It’s amazing that it’s free, because our budget was quite modest, which really helped to save some resources, but what is good also about blender (IS) you can have this real -time resorting (and) This really helps with intuitivity in that, “said zilbalodis.” I learned (Blender) when I did this movie. I had not used it before and it is really quick to learn. Our animations them only as a week to learn. ”
There is little life that imitates art imitative life in the creation of “flow”. Zilbalodis identifies with the cat – a creature that is more comfortable working alone but who needs to merge with a team. All animals must figure out challenges together to thrive. But whether it is through art style, camera movement or music (and Zilbalodis composed over eight hours himself before working with Rihard’s Zalupe to create the film’s points), “Flow” builds a naturalistic world that leaves room for our emotions and the adventures we may have them.
“It’s something I feel the audience is looking for – realism in (animation) has already been reached and people, I think, get bored by it and the audience really includes different types of appearance for movies. Now it is also accepted in larger, more mainstream films, but I believe in the smaller, independent area, the boundaries are pushed much longer, ”said Zilbalodis.
