Fireflies - Short Film

Fireflies - short film from Anzel Rossouw on Vimeo.

When I was studying at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), at the Canberra Campus here in Australia in 2012; I had the opportunity to work with a group of students, where we had to create a short film as part of our first year final assignment. We ended up being eight students; where we only had about two months to create this short film.

This short film is about two fireflies that falls in love within the sun set of the swamp. The Fireflies Short Film created by 8 students in the Advanced Diploma of Screen and Media over 8 weeks.

The process of creating a film always starts with getting a story board together with a good solid storyline. So we came together as a group and brainstormed a few ideas for the short film. The inspiration for our short film originally came from the song Fireflies by Owl City. 

Owl City from Endeavor Media Group on Vimeo.

We wanted to create a short film about fireflies as being sung in the song; instead we ended up with a comedy/ romance story about two fireflies in a swamp.

The style of this short film was aimed at being a very cartoon like/ fantasy style, almost the same type of style that could be found in a Disney film, so a non-realistic film. So the next step was to start concept sketches and creating an storyboard which also meant blocking out the basic poses of the animation with block models. I was initially the environment concept artist for the short film.

Tree Concepts by Anzel Rossouw 2012

I have included some of the concept sketches as well as color swatches that I have created in Adobe Photoshop, just to get an idea of what the environment could potentially look like. I ended up looking at the Disney movie, The princess and the frog, for some ideas of how the swamp could look like, as well as looking at many images of swamps in America and what kind of vegetation are found in those locations. Looking at the style of my trees, I had quite a bit of influence from the styles that Tim Burton uses in his movies.

Leaf Concepts by Anzel Rossouw 2012

After getting the style of the trees right, I started creating some leaf designs. Looking at different color schemes of greens as well as the types of leaves and what they would look like on one of my tree designs. Before these sketches I've never really attempted creating environment concept sketches/ art, so it was pretty new to me to get the leaves to actually look like leaves; to get the ideas in my head into a visual representation. So this was a bit of a challenge for me.

Environment Layout Concepts by Anzel Rossouw 2012

I then tried incorporated these trees together in a landscape form; where I would be able to gather a good idea as to how these trees would look together when added into the environment with water and some other environmental assets. I wanted to see whether these trees would fit into a swamp environment as it isn't really your typical swamp tree.

Environment Concepts by Anzel Rossouw 2012

On the right I've included some of the very basic designs of the environment assets that could be found within swamps. I looked at many swamp images as references and looked at the vegetation that are found in these very moist areas. I found that plants such as ferns and lily pads as well as vines on the trees are very common in these areas. I also included a bit of a color scheme of a range of green colors that could be used.

Lighting Concepts by Anzel Rossouw 2012

This short film takes place within a sun set lighting, where at the start of the film it is in a late afternoon time of day, where it then progresses through to the end of the short film where the film ends at a night setting. The lighting concepts that I created has been included on the left where I have illustrated the progression of the stages from late afternoon to night, through the film together with color swatches of what the lighting might look like.

Below are two rendered images from scenes 8 and 9 from the short film where I did layout, created concepts as well as created the CG lighting and then composited the different render passes together with some paint overs. These were done using software programs such as Autodesk Maya for the layout of the scene and the lighting as well as Adobe Photoshop for the basic composition. Even though I created the trees concepts, the modelling of the trees were split between me and another student and many of the environment assets were created by some of the other students. These assents were created using the program ZBrush by Pixologic and Autodesk Maya. Unfortunately the shot shown below in the second image from scene 9, does not appear in the film due to complications when we were rendering, but I still think is turned out really great.

"Scenes 8" Lighting, Layout, Concepts and Composition by Anzel Rossouw 2012

"Scenes 9" Lighting, Layout, Concepts and Composition by Anzel Rossouw 2012

I'm really proud of this short film and think that for first year students, we did a pretty great job for the knowledge that we had back then. Although when I look back at it now and compare it to work that we have recently created, I find that we are capable of so much more now. We have learnt quite a bit since then. I know I have definitely improved, and all it needs is practice and more experience. I still think for a first year assignment, considering how many students we were and how much time we had; we really did do a great job and it turned out to be a great short film.