Christmas Present - animating magic

James McKay’s concept sketch

Our first reveal of Christmas Present is a shot I’ve kept closely guarded, but now it’s in the trailer, I can finally talk about it. The idea of revealing Christmas Past and Present with the bed curtains was established on my first script review with Art Director James McKay. Also, established then was our basic colour language, starting the film heavily desaturated (no colour in Scrooge’s world), and progressively upping the colour with Christmas Future, bringing the first vivid burst of colour into Scrooges monochrome world. I called this our ‘Wizard of Oz shot’, a respectful homage to Dorothy stepping out into magical technicolour.

We also set out the basics of our animation language. With a small budget, we couldn’t afford much animation, and I hit on the idea of using animation to herald supernatural events. James showed me the classic French shot ‘La Jetée’, which uses this concept to incredible effect and helped further inform our style. Here’s our animation progression reel for the shot.

Christmas Present animation Progression reel Layout and character keys, James McKay FX Animator, David Bunting Assistant Animator, Kat Owens Compositor, Chloe Waite

Creating the Book in After Effects - Alexia Vargas Arevalo

Alexia Vargas Arevalo is a young After Effects artist on our composting team, and a recent graduate from UAL (University of the Arts London) where I gust lecture. Her main job was creating the beautiful book, She had a head start using a 3D Book template for Adobe After Effects but it was still a big design task to create our pages, and light it carefully to bridging the opening live-action title sequence with the CG book.

Alexia worked remotely from London, and I asked her about her experience working on what was one of her first jobs in the industry.

Working with the team has been a pleasure, even though it was remotely, I was amazed at how incredible everything was handled. Thanks to David who was always keen to encourage and keep the team together. The project was very challenging due to the short time available.

As the After Effects artist, I was in charge of designing and animating the CGI Book, which was very fun to do I must say! What was not as fun was the rendering after every shot was done, as it took hours and hours to render all the details and so much time waiting. Meanwhile, I was able to help in the preparation of James's illustrations for Harmony, so all that time would not go to waste. Thank you Chloe for your guidance.

Working in this animation gave me a different perspective of how animation can be done. Effectively created with watercolour illustrations and having just this huge animation in a short time, makes me realize that anything is possible as long as you have a great team like this one.

A little trivia - we’ve used real-world textures to make the CG fit the live-action… the coffee table is my own!

The Final Push

With a locked edit, we had just 2 weeks to finish compositing around 130 shots! Many were prepped, but still, this was a challenge for any studio and we had a team of 4 working remotely, including me, and I was working full-time hours storyboarding on a TV series! But what a team! Chloe Wait, our Lead Harmony Compositor, Kat Owens my assistant animator (both recent graduates from University Arts Bournemouth) and Alexia Vargas Arevalo, our After Effects artist fresh out of University of the Arts, London.

Chloe Waite, composting final shots in ToonBoom Harmony.

Alexia prepped James’s hand painted watercolour backgrounds and character poses in PhotoShop. Kat handled final animation clean-up, tones and digital ink and paint. Chloe brought all of these elements together into the final shots, and I checked shots in the evenings. Chloe had thankfully already experienced the pressures of working in a fast-paced composting team at Brown Bag Films and was managed to keep all those pates spinning!

Still, by the last Friday, we had about 50 shots outstanding, that needed to be in the edit in 4 days. Chloe and I spent a long last weekend. I composited some of the simpler shots directly in Storyboard Pro while kat handled the complex shots in Harmony. And Kat finally got to animate a shot by herself - Want and Ignorance!

Here’s what Chloe has to say about her experience.

I was responsible for putting together the art and animation into final shots, and adding lighting and effects, such as the flickering shadows in Scrooge’s house to the snow falling on the Cratchit’s house. Working on this project has been an absolutely amazing experience, especially when I’ve been working alongside such incredible artists! My favourite scene from the project is the last shot that overlooks the whole of Huddersfield, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it in the finished film!

ABOVE: Chloe’s favourite shot, an epic multiplane shot over overlooking Huddersfield. This progression shows the art and skill of composting - assembling different layers of art and adding tonal adjustments and other effects to create a satisfying single image.

The Editors Job - A fresh set of Eyes

Our recent review in The Stage said:

Dickens’ indelible tale is artfully condensed into a 40-minute running time, without skimping on the central message of the power of redemption or missing out any of its key moments.

So this is a perfect time to talk about the man who helped us do this, our editor, Adam Kirk.

Writer/Director Olivia Race’s play was written for the stage, so when circumstances made her rethink this as a fully animated production, I was left with a challenge. Great speeches and exchanges of dialogue make great theatre, but in animation, they tend to drag. Especially without the budget to animate character animation showing the nuances of acting a stage a actor brings. James and I, worked closely with with Olivia, trimmed lines as we built the film in storyboards. But with one month to go, we were still looking at a film with a 50-minute running time and…. it dragged. We needed an editor and thankfully I knew a very good one, Adam Kirk. But editors do more than cut. Adam also created one of my favorite moments in the film. I’ll let him tell the story!…

 I was delighted to be asked to join the team by David Bunting and was given a free hand by producer Lauren Townsend and Writer / Director Olivia Race to “cut the film” as I thought was necessary… but bear in mind they “might want to put back what I had cut out!” When I saw the rough animatic for the first time it was a running around 50 minutes. After watching it I felt I should aim for around 40 minutes as this is a standard running length on a lot of series online. But what to cut out? The script had been so eloquently written by Olivia, this was not going to be easy... especially as I’d been originally given a day to do this!

After watching the film a couple of times, I decided to cut anything that didn’t move Scrooges character arc forward. But this wasn’t easy as I couldn’t cut any of the key moments. So I set about to cut down some of the dialogue that would have worked well on stage, but in this screen version didn’t feel absolutely necessary to understand the story. This got me down to 42 minutes…. So where to find a 2 minute scene to cut?! I eventually decided to cut the scene where we hear people talking about Scrooges death (originally in the book in the money houses) and move all those lines over an amazing shot (which was already animated) of the approach of Christmas Future.

I did all this using their dialogue and repeating that dialogue as if you were hearing snippets of people talking as time moved forward. The next day, I uploaded the finished rough cut of around 38 minutes… and waited for the zoom meeting to see everyone’s reaction.

Everyone loved it, especially the combined Christmas future and characters talking about Scrooges death. I passed the responsibility of cutting a proper sound track to Jon Hudson, sound designer and then it was onto the fine cut, working with Olivia and Lauren to put back parts of scenes and key lines I had cut out.. to bring us a final running time of 39’55 with credits.

Now all Davids animation team had to do was complete 140 shots in just over a week and a half and get them to me so I could cut them into the final film...

Editor, Adam Kirk

"Impressively realised" - THE STAGE

First reviews are in and we are thrilled to get 4-star billing from The Stage! A massive achievement to all the cast and crew and triumph for our animation team who earned this plaudit -

“the star of the show is David Bunting’s delightfully smudgy animation, which, aided by James McKay’s art direction, looks like a picture book evocatively brought to life and is reminiscent of John Leech’s original 1843 illustrations while having a distinctive style all of its own.”

FT: A Christmas Carol: why Dickens’s fable is a tale for today

Our little co-production with LBT and Front Room Productions has made it into the nationals in this great write up from the Finacial Times on the relevance of A Christmas Carol today (something we felt very strongly making it) - side by side The Old Vic and London’s Bridge Theatre! With standout art from James McKay!

"It’s the way the story fronts up to the darkness first — and its startling resonance for a society grappling with ethical questions about priorities, poverty and the price of human life."

A Message From Gyles Brandreth

Listen to Gyles…

“The animation is extraordinary”

It all started with... an illustrated Script

Having just wrapped the film, I flicked through our earliest sketches.

Art Director James McKay and I started this huge undertaking mid Summer, sat in a ventilated conservatory reading Olivia Race’s script, breaking it into key scenes, story beats, locations, and talking ideas. Instead of viewing film adaptations, we went back to the book in the hope of coming up with a new visual take on this story, James captured a lot of these by illustrating on a copy of the script from which I started roughly breaking it down into storyboards.

Visual ideas always grow and change over time. What is amazing looking back is how many of the key shots came out of this afternoon collaboration.

James and I drawing and talking ideas.

James McKay, surrounded by research, creating his first rough concepts on the script

Trailer in time for Halloween!

The trailer for our magical animated co-production of A Christmas Carol with Front Room Productions has arrived...

Starring Gyles Brandreth as Ebenezer Scrooge alongside a fantastic local community ensemble.

Available online 1 - 31 December. Book now bit.ly/LBT-ACC

The shot in this trailer was the first shot we animated, and a real composting challenge. I animated Christmas Future, and Chloe Waite, our compositor a recent graduate from University Arts Bournemouth took over. Not only did Chloe composite all the background elements in this shot, but she also cleaned up my animation, added tones, and watercolour textures to the character to make it blend with James’s watercolour background art. Here’s an animation progression reel.

Animating Scrooge

Perhaps the biggest drawn animation challenge in this film was this climactic scene of scrooge begging for a chance of redemption and change “the writing on this stone”. Animating a character whose emotions you believe in is the hardest of animation challenges. On top of this, we had a lot of cloth animation, from Scrooge’s nightgown, hat, and the robes of Christmas Future, all of which have their own motion paths. James McKay drew the character keys and I roughed out the animation of the falling drapes of Christmas Future.

Kat Owens Assisting

I worked closely with my assistant animator, Kat Owens, a graduate from Arts University Bournemouth who began the process of cleaning up the keys, to make each one look like a James McKay drawing, and then breaking down the character movement, and all of the timing subtleties that give weight and believability to this movement. Once we have this, the next stage is ink and paint. To make sure we don’t get our many tones of grey mixed up, we colour with vivid primary colours, before changing these to the final colours you’ll see in the film, along with the extra tones to give this dimension.

IN describing her role as assistant animator, Kat said,

I helped the Lead animator in producing animation. Some of my tasks included: Inbetweening, taking my assigned animation and adding drawings inbetween to create a smooth movement; animating shadows in cloth and curtains and adding colour to the animation. Overall, my experience on this production has been a joyous, learning curve that I'm grateful to have been a part of. I've been able to work with new people, learn, and practice new skills which have made me improve as an animator. It has also left me feeling more confident about my ability to animate and work within a team, despite being at home with my cat for my entire time on the production. I'm thankful to the team for allowing me to contribute to "A Christmas Carol" and I'm excited to see the production come together.

New Backgrounds - colour language

More amazing and atmospheric background art from James. In this collection, you can start to see the how we are using colour to show Scrooge’s journey. There’s very little colour in Scrooge’s world at the opening. His dwellings are stark, high contrast shadows and light for classic horror. As Christmas Past comes, Scrooge sees the world through tinted sepias. And Christmas Present brings full saturated colour into Scrooge’s world before Christmas Future takes Scrooge back into darkness.

James and I

Thought it would be good to reveal a little of the process going on behind the scenes. Here’s James at work in his studio, brining hand painted watercolour art back to animation.

The process starts with storyboards which both James and I have contributed too. Here are James and I reviewing layout plans, before James commits to breaking up layers and painting backgrounds. While most of our animation production is virtual, working with a team across the country, James and I working as a bubble family has really helped this core stage of pre-production conception.

Animation Director, David Bunting reviewing layouts with Art Director James McKay

And here’s the result - a magnificent, background watercolour painting, brimming with atmosphere from the hand of a skilled artist.

Graveyard background painting

Old crones

These old crones are truly terrifying! This, for me, is perhaps the darkest part of Scrooges nightmare, as the old women collect their spoils from Scrooge’s corpse. James’s watercolours are brimming with nightmarish character, and spark lighting, and they cackle out of the gloom.

New Backgrounds

It’s really exciting to see some of James’ final backgrounds come through. We have been focusing on finding some key images in the story that cover big emotional moments and using colour and light to support these emotional beats..

This final still image below, shows Scrooge on Christmas morning walking through the crisp bright winter sunlight, the colour and light of which show Scrooge’s redemption

The old station below, by contrast, in cold foreboding blue’s sets the stage for the appearance of Christmas Future. The missing statue, will go on a seperate layer to add depth to the shot, along with animated fog.

The Cratchit’s house on Christmas Day. Those perilous snow covered steps come from actual photo research in Huddersfield from the era and add lots of drama with the Bob walking up those steps with Tiny Tim on his back.

Character poses - experimental watercolour studies

We have started exploring ways to achieve James watercolour look throughout as we tread the balance between artistic vision and budgeting and scheduling parameters. Combing textured watercolour backgrounds with flat characters have been a challenge explored in drawn animation since the 1930s. While today’s technology offers solutions, no texture brush is going to ever compete with a hand-painted watercolour in James skilled hand. So James has painted a few quick character studies to see if we can find a solution that’s fast enough to be practical. We’ve been testing these in the evolving animatic, and what we are discovering is the detail in these images mean we can vastly reduce the number of poses because watercolour gives its own life. We need to explore this further, but we feel if we can pull it off, it will give a really unique look and feel.

More Layouts

James has covered a lot of ground this week, from Scrooge’s bleak old school to Belle’s garden, to some Christmas Future layouts. All these are line art studies, with all tones removed for this stage. The emphasis on architectural details and composition.

Schoolroom Interior

School hall

Belle's Garden

Old Station

Graveyard

Story Reels

Most of the film is now up in story reels in various stages. Scratch dialogue track, provided by members of Knaresborough Players, along with a few temporary spot effects are combined with rough story sketches and concept art to provide an audio-visual experience of the film in its early stages.

The process is equivalent to the theatre rehearsal process, exploring the dramatic potential of scenes, the blocking of characters, and the use of lighting and sound to heighten emotion. Unlike live-action films, edited after filming, the editing in animation happens at this stage, so it is an important time to make editorial decisions before costly production work commences. It’s an opportunity to play with ideas quickly before the reels are locked and the time-consuming process of layout and animation begins. The pace of the film often feels different on screen than on paper,

ZOOM scratch recording with The Knaresborough Players. From left to right: Mike Atkinson, David and Jemma Bunting, Kathryn Leigh and Emilie Knight

In time, the voices of the Knaresborough Players and the story sketches by James and I will be replaced by the cast and the final animation art. But the contribution of both will live large on the screen.

Story concept art by James McKay

Opening & Closing shot (Multi-plane camera)

Along with the opening image, the final image creates the bookend that encapsulates the journey. It’s the last thing the audience sees, and should cement the theme of the film, as well as represent what happened and changed over the course of this journey.

‘Blake Snyder’

Based on James McKay’s concept for the finale image (below), we’ve created detailed a pre-vis layout and in ToonBoom Harmony, to create an immersive 3D scene. This will be the most technically complex and most expensive shot in the film, literally bringing the audience into the illustration book world, which we will also mirror at the end (with more radiant colours than the bleak foggy opening), creating a rousing climax befitting of Scrooge’s reformed character.

Hudds 1840s panorama - Concept Art by James McKay

For the final scene, the shot takes us from Scrooge’s offices, with the camera panning out to reveal Huddersfield in the 1840s. From that, we pull out into what will become a book frame, within the last page of the Christmas Carol book.

The multi-plane camera, innovated by the Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s, separates layers in 3D space so that when the camera is moved, we see the shift in parallax and perspective. Unlike the original, which was two stories high, today’s multi-plane camera is all digital, sitting on a desk in our studio, powered by ToonBoom Harmony.

Creating this shot was a massive task, creating 12 separate layers of background artwork and one character level.

This video shows the shot in layout drawing, with scratch dialogue. Colour, mist, the book border, and CG book are all still to come.

Layout Begins!

James began background layouts this week. While we continue to lock the storyboards, we are concentrating on ‘tent-pole’ images that define key moments of the story. These layouts expand on the concept art and camera angles established in the story sketches, defining the details of the environment. They have no colour or characters yet but are rather the foundations of the sets, brimming with their own character.

Scrooge's dwellings

Scrooge's ext.door

Schoolyard Ariel master shot

Huddersfield opening and closing - with Scrooge's offices

Bob Cratchit's house ext.