GENTLY
An animated short about a young lady learning that to overcome your negative thoughts, you have to afford yourself a little kindness.
Gently - by Fatima Hachem, Favor Diokpo, Nerly Saint-Fleur, Tori Highet, Rochelle Moor, Etienne Doucet-Leger
Work I did on the project
- Lead Script Writer
- Story
- Robin character development / background
- Spider Character Design
- Rigging
- spider
- miscellaneous objects within the room (pens, chair, plant, cork board, the room)
- Motion Capture Technician - alongside a few other teammates
- Lighting Lead
- built lighting kits to assist teammates in lighting.
- Reviewed and corrected lighting in all shots.
- Set / Project Assembly (building the 3D scene based off of the concept art and available models using a referencing system)
- Animation (mostly cleanup)
Spider Character Design
There were two spider designs per the original idea for the spider character in the script. The "Soft" spider and the "Armored" spider. The soft spider becomes armored as a result of violent treatment towards it. If treated gently will return to its soft form.
Soft Spider
Soft shapes, to indicate it is benign.
The benign spider was based off of jumping spiders, which are arguably the most friendly looking spiders as seen in the images above.
Armored Spider
Angular, hard shapes, to indicate it is dangerous and vicious.
Long unstable legs, as if it is standing on needles to indicate it is unstable, much like negative thoughts are.
The body features a stringer shaped object, reminiscent of a wasp stinger.
The main issue we had with the spider was in trying to relate the spider to Robin visually so people would understand that it came from her thoughts. My team and I brainstormed some ideas, such as giving the spider Robin's hairdo, or giving Robin a tattoo and having that tattoo be visible on the spider somewhere, one idea that was suggested in jest was to attach Robin's head to the spider's body.
In the end we tried to relate them visually through the color green. In the dark room, most of the objects are pink, red, or purple, the only exception being the cyan colored plant, hence only the spider and Robin would have anything green on them.
Rigging
Spider Rig
Full Demo of the Spider Rig. Spider Model made by Etienne Doucet-Leger. The textures seen here are not the final textures, rather they are exclusive to this rig demonstration.
Rigging Obstacles
1. Asymmetric models: My teammate that modeled the spider made the leg shapes and positions asymmetrical to give it more character and make it seem more organic. This introduced complications for me while I was rigging as I couldn't just mirror my joints, doubling my workload.
2. Flat spider legs: I drew out the character sheets for the spiders with the modeler in mind. However to rig the spider I needed the spider to be in it's neutral standing position, not with its legs flat against the ground. To fix this I rigged the legs and bent them, duplicated the geometry in its bent position and then rebuilt the rig so that the joints didn't have any orientation values on them.
Neat Features
A-B Controls: I studied up about spider walk cycles, and there was a neat reference on youtube about how to animate a spider walk cycle. Using that as a reference I devised what I call the "A-B system" for the legs. This would make rigging the spider's movement easier and faster for the animators. The legs on either side of the spider were divided into "A" legs and "B" legs and each pair could be selected together.
The rig also has both IK and FK controls for the legs to allow the animators more options to achieve their desired results.
Room Rigs
Robin's scale relative to the room shrinks, however rather than shrink Robin's character model we scaled the room. Other items in the room were also rigged to achieve the different results we required. The plant uses an IK spline, while the other objects are simply controlled by a curve without any joints.
The pens and pencils that were on the desk were rigged so that moving them would cause them to roll as well, and the eraser and ruler would jitter while moving, so animators didn't have to worry about that. This was to expedite the animation process.
Lighting
I created "lighting kits" which were sets of lights to help with consistency. They were sets of lights for the different overall scenes for lighters to use. I reviewed all the shots and made modifications to a lot of the lighting in those shots. I lit shots as well. Below are samples of scenes I lit and scenes I modified.
Animation
Below are samples of scenes I animated. I assisted with the motion capture process and then cleaned up the data for the final version.
Script
I was lead writer for the script of our short. My team wanted to go with the theme "love." Originally we had a script that centered around familial love. However the scope was rather large for the requirements of our project. From there the shift went to the platonic love one feels for their friends, and finally to self-love.
Some of the ideas in the previous drafts of the script made it to the final version of the script. For example in one of the first drafts centered around the theme that "it's okay to ask for help," wherein the protagonist was in a very dark room, reflecting their negative headspace or that they are in a "dark place," they reach out for help. While the dark room carried over to Gently, the theme did not, as it changed to "be kind to yourself."
The Spider
The team recognized that to portray that we would need to visually represent Robin's negative thoughts. One idea that was recommended was a "shadow self," which would just be a version of Robin that's enshrouded in shadow. This idea is rather overused, so I proposed a we use a spider instead to represent her anxiety and overall negative thoughts/headspace. I arrived at using a spider after asking myself, "what's something that most people dislike?" I figured most people dislike spiders and proposed the idea and it was accepted by the team.
The spider also had two forms: a benign, soft spider and an edgy, "armored" spider. The idea was that the spider, much like actual spiders, will not attack unless it detects a threat. Often with our own negative thoughts, using animosity or further negativity such as insults (stop being lazy!), in order to motivate oneself can result in the opposite effect. People can become defensive (armored) and lash out what was supposed to motivate them.
Furthermore, more often than not, negative thoughts come from a relatively harmless source. They can come from the soft, sensitive core of a person. The voice of negativity may seem ominous, but the reality is it's more like a scared child in need of gentle consolation.
Ideally the spider would have been it it's soft benign form initially, upon being attacked by Robin it would transform into its armored form. When Robin decides to approach it with kindness, however, it would resume being the soft benign version of itself. There was an attempt at that in changing the spider's green to pink in the end. However the reality is that we ran out of time and so the original soft spider didn't make it into the cut.
Metaphors
Robin's Size
Robin and the spider are about the same size originally. However when she fights it by hitting it or harming it it ends up growing. Keeping in mind that the spider represents her negative thoughts, fighting negativity with cold harshness can often have adverse effects, making the negativity grow, hence the spider grows. By the time she approaches the spider it's larger than she is and much more ominous.
Robin's room scaling to be ridiculously larger than she is, is meant to represent how she views her tasks. They seem gargantuan and insurmountable goals, when they're really simple tasks. The idea was to put the viewer in Robin's shoes so they could think: "well getting things done is going to be much more difficult now."
The Dark Room
Again we were using the environment to put the viewer into the protagonist's shoes. Robin's dark room reflects her dark headspace. Her negativity makes it hard for her to see clearly, so she can't see her accomplishments, which continues her downward spiral.
Further emphasizing the point is the spider that emits light. It draws her, and the viewers focus, making them both focus on the characterization of Robin's negative thoughts.
Fun Facts
Robin's name
In much of my reading, defining a character is essential to writing an effective story, however we didn't decide on Robin's gender until the script was in its final stages. The reason being many of the themes we were addressing apply to any gender, and depending on which of the different themes my team chose to go with, the gender of the character would change. For example in the script with the theme that "it's okay to ask for help," I would have preferred a male character. Mainly due to the higher suicide rate, and the fact that they are less likely to go to therapy.
In choosing the the theme "be kind to yourself," I felt using a female character would be better. This mostly comes from my own observations of the women I've come across in my life as well as an observation of own self.
Robin's Race
Our team was diverse and I had the pleasure of working with two highly skilled black women. We agreed that often black characters are cast into basic archetypes, such as the mammy or Jezebel for example, rather than being allowed the varied characterizations afforded to other characters. I'd personally read an article that a friend had shared that highlighted those archetypes and criticized media for this poor treatment of black characters years ago. Hence the decision was made, because as a team we wished the break those archetypes. This isn't to say all archetypes are bad, but rather the existing archetypes pertaining to black women of color specifically are severely limited and did not acknowledge the nuance found in Black People of Color, or people in general at all.
