Ashish Paul — IMM Senior Project Previews

What is Sunboy and Blue?

Sunboy and Blue is a 2D animated short that follows the story of Sunboy as he is confronted by a mysterious girl in strange blue clothes. She very sneakily asks him to meet her on a rooftop with a smirk that really piques Sunboy’s interest. This is the story of their fateful meeting as she asks him what he thinks of the world and talks about how things are just a whole lot more interesting for people like them. Sunboy starts to get annoyed at that way she is speaking, because it sounds like she knows something about him and is just dangling a string in front of him. He starts to walk toward her saying that she doesn’t know anything about him, but as he does, the girl starts to walk backward until she is at the edge of the roof. Sunboy sees this and stops right away, but before he can say anything, he catches a glimpse of her eyes glowing as she falls of the roof. Sunboy is frozen in place by what he just witnessed. However, he spots something on the edge of the roof, something strange, something blue and white, just holding on. He reaches out his hand, and as he does, a mysterious figure floats up from the edge. Awestruck, Sunboy can only watch her gracefully float through the air. Her body looks like it was made out of sky and clouds. The girl smiles as she says, “Hello Sunboy, I’m Blue. I have powers just like you”.

So how did I get here exactly?

Man, where do I even begin? My journey throughout senior thesis this past semester has been an interesting, fun, and pretty stressful one, for sure. I guess I should admit that for half of the semester I was working toward a completely different thesis project. With the thesis course being a two-semester experience, the project that I had initially envisioned in the fall was to make a real-life film about my friends and myself playing volleyball in the middle of a pandemic. This idea was one of the out-there ideas that I pitched, and to my surprise, a lot of people seemed interested and excited about the project. In turn, after hearing everyone’s thoughts, I too was very excited. So this is the idea that I started to develop. Long story short, because of the pandemic and winter weather, it became difficult to play volleyball together and the project ended up needing some retooling. In this semester’s class, I decided to turn the idea into a manga-style comic book in order to not only play to my strengths as an artist but also explore the world of manga imagery. So, for the first half of the semester, I slowly put in the work. Writing the story, sketching the panels, drawing the character designs. It felt great making steady progress. I actually got 7 pages done. But uhhh…turns out that all the enthusiasm and excitement was a façade. A simple face that was put on for the sake of pleasing others, instead of what I really wanted to do.

So half a semester just wasted huh?

Well, yes and no. While it is true that I did end up putting aside half a semester’s work, I would not have found my real passion project and drive had I not gone through this process. So…here’s what happened: halfway through the semester, I found myself creating a character by the name of Sunboy. Here’s his early concept work:

I thought he was really cool! The main inspiration behind this character was one of those ice-breaker questions we ALWAYS get asked in school. (Even in college, too!) I guess it’s just something no one can escape. Well anyway, the question is: “If you could pick any superpower, what would it be?” Of course, my answer is always teleportation. Aside from that, I would really like the power to control the sun, so that I can raise or lower my body temperature to be however hot or cool I want to be. Mainly, this is because I hate the feeling of being cold. Whatever other things controlling the sun have in store is always a bonus. I had never really thought that deeply about this idea before. However, when I was asked to create a character in another recent class, I ended up thinking about that answer a lot. I found the concept inspiring and decided to just create it. The results were exciting!

Alright, so all that is fine and dandy, but here is where things get a little weird. About a week later, I actually ended up having a dream with the Sunboy character I had created – crazy, I know! In this dream, I am Sunboy and I meet a mysterious girl who brings me onto a rooftop. She speaks to me about something and ends up jumping off the roof! Flustered, I make my way closer to the edge, where I see a hand holding onto the ledge of the roof. I look over and see the girl dangling on the edge. I try to reach out and save her, but she just smiles at me and pulls herself up so fast, I don’t even see her come up. She just disappears. Confused, I look up, only to see her floating in the sky, clouds at her feet, her body completely made of sky and clouds. Her main defining feature is that she has thick black lines that outline her body, clothes, and face. I remember being awestruck. She waved her hands, scooped me up in clouds, and together we flew through the city -- kind of like the carpet ride in Aladdin. That’s probably the best way I can describe it. After I woke up, I was in awe of what I had just gone through. Dreams like this one really just stand out from all the others. I have so many weird dreams that I remember all the time, but this one, I knew, was something special. You can already guess that I knew what I needed to do. I got to work as soon as I could. I just had to bring this character out of my mind and onto the screen.

Enter the ever so lovely Blue! I have to admit, the feeling of looking at a character leave my mind and appear in front of my eyes is just something that will never get old. The moment I was able to take a step back and look at her design, I fell in love with her. Usually, during the creating process, these characters go through a lot of iterations -- but for Blue, I had a very clear vision of what she would look like. I supposed that seeing her in a dream also really helped that vison, literally and figuratively. It was at this point where I knew that I just had to flesh out this awesome story that had come to me literally in a dream, of all things. So, I did the next logical thing and drew up a storyboard animatic:

My plan for this project was to take it down the 2D animation route. It was something I always wanted to do, but either didn’t have the knowledge, skills, or technology. At this point in time, I was still working primarily on the volleyball project. However, the more I worked on this story, I just knew that I had to make it my senior thesis project, for a few reasons. The first reason was that I was absolutely invested in this new project, and I was throwing the volleyball project to the side. The second was the time constraint I was under. It was just not realistic for me to do two projects of this scale at the same time with only half a semester remaining -- especially to the level of quality that I invest in my projects. The third reason was that I wanted to make a high-quality project that followed the main idea that I had envisioned. All throughout college, when I thought of a really cool concept for a project, I always had to down scale it to something I could manage because of time, technology, and skill limitations. Because of that, when I was done, yes it was something that I made and I was proud of it given the knowledge I have. However, at the same time, it just was not satisfying to me and there was always the feeling of ‘man, this could have been so much cooler.’ So this time, I was not going to allow myself to do that. I was going to give my all to this one really cool thing and to do that I had to drop the volleyball project. So, that’s exactly what I did.

Just believe in the process

Now that this thesis project had my full attention, it was time to get to work. But first, I had to learn how to animate first. I tried a few things like drawing from memory frame by frame in various different software packages such as Adobe Animate and After Effects, but they just weren’t what I was looking for. Animate was cool and all, but it was very limited in the color options I had. So quite a bit of time went by. That’s when, for one of our character classes with Professor Sanders, I was introduced to a technique called rotoscoping. I had heard the term before, and I knew what it was in After Effects, but I didn’t know it was possible in Photoshop. (I didn’t even know you could animate in Photoshop.) I felt like the universe just once again sent the answer I was looking for just in the nick of time. For those who don’t know, rotoscoping is when you take live footage, or, I suppose, footage in general, and then draw over it to get 2D animation. This process is very handy and greatly speeds up the process, while allowing for fluid-looking animation. So, I gave it a shot to test the waters. I recorded some footage of myself and tried to animate over it:

Holy moly, this was not as easy as I thought! Not only was it extremely time consuming, it was also just incredibly brain numbing to just sit there drawing every frame over and over. I just had to find an easier way to do this. That is when the universe sent me another sign and I stumbled across a YouTube channel that was doing the exact same work I was looking to do. The animator was making rotoscope films, which were so so good. The channel name was “Olof Storm” and I ended up watching a LOT of these videos and learning a lot. I found out that he animated his film in 12 frames per second, and because of the amount of drawing you would have to do, there were significantly fewer frames than if you were animating at 24 or 30 frames per second. I also learned that most cartoon series animate ‘in 2’s,’ meaning that they animate the new action every two frames. I saw this as a huge opportunity. But that is when I was hit with some pretty big news.

WE WERE MOVING!!

Yeah, that’s right. My parents had secured and bought a house. Obviously, this was fantastic news! However, what I didn’t know was that the new house needed much work in order to be ready to live in. So, this was the problem: it was almost mid-March, the Showcase was two months away, and I essentially had a story board, two concepts, and a really weird test animation. I would be lying if I said that my confidence was through the roof right now. I had no idea how to make this work, but one thing was for sure, I was NOT gonna downscale. I really put my faith in the abilities and knowledge that I have acquired throughout the years, and knew I would come through. So, one whole month goes by because my Mom and I were working in the new house. We finally finished the house close to mid-April. We moved everything by mid-April, and now everything is fine. Only one problem: I have less than a month to get this project done.

My Process

It is now time to not panic and laser focus in on this thesis project. Luckily, I seem to be one of the ones that does well under pressure. Unlike the storyboard, I wanted the opening scene to be viewed from the front. I recorded the footage that I wanted, brought it into Photoshop, and set it to 12 frames per second. From there, I started to draw over my recorded body every 2nd frame. Then, I realized something very important a few frames in. Unfortunately for myself, I do not have the ideal figure, and because of that, the figure for Blue looked way off her original design:

So, I essentially had to start over again. This time, with every frame I took, I paid very special attention to the way she was drawn. This time, I used the footage as my motion guide instead. The result required a lot more time, but the result was something that I was very proud of:

The moment I saw Blue in motion, I was fired up and ready to do more. From there, the grind was on and the process just kept repeating itself until I was finished with the animation. Going back for color once the line art was done was the next big step. I colored a few different frames to see what worked and what didn’t and asked others. But I eventually settled on one, and filled it in for every frame. Then, once that step was complete, I went back once again to draw the door that she was opening and then added a placeholder sky. The results were quite awesome:

From here, the process was quite simple for the rest of the project. Some other fun stuff that I got to make was a cool overview video and a really awesome cover photo that I am also really proud of:

I’d like to think that these characters are like real actors who are starring in my film. I think it gives me a whole new perspective into their personalities and really gets me immersed with the characters. So, I would imagine the caption for these photos being:

“The crew saw a huge rock and told us, “sit on that and strike a pose! It’ll be great promo material”. Honestly, I’m not that great at this sort of thing. 😅 Sunboy seems to be a natural, however. I also learned that I blend in quite well on a sunny day and therefore had to use the human form for this one” -Blue