Pre-Production | cloudwilk

The idea for the film originated during the summer of 2014 while I was taking my English Composition class. I was brewing ideas and titles for an upcoming essay when, suddenly, 'The Place Where the Rainbows Came From' appeared in mind. I didn't have a story to it, but there was something about the title alone that resonated with me. I couldn't help but start making a work-book for this as one of my many future full length features. After about a month, the file got stashed into my idea folder and left fairly untouched for awhile.

One summer later, exhausted from the previous spring quarter's concept development class, I struggled with coming up with an idea for my senior film. My creativity hit a low, and though I was able to put forth concept after concept, nothing seemed to evoke any kind of passion.

What if I lost my creativity? What am I going to do? How far behind is this going to put me? There was a lot of fear when summer of 2015 started.

It was midsummer when I saw my old folder with the Word document titled, "The Place Where the Rainbows Came From." The feeling from 2014 flooded me. This was it. This is where I will start.

The Place Where the Rainbows Came From- Pre-Production

The first block in the road was to transform my 90-minute film plan into a minute long senior short. This involved a lot of cutting out, though not as much as I would've thought. Lots of things were able to be added in with simple, brilliant, cues.

What the film turned into was a play on creativity in an organized way. I knew the story was about a beautiful forest and a more realistic/darker forest. There was freedom in developing what kind of magical creatures could inhabit such a land, however, grounded freedom as I had to chose a specific kind of habitat to add that extra believability. The habitat of choice is, more often found in Canada, the Mixed Woodland Plains biome.

Early concepts of the Cotton Candy Coon (Amber Ferguson) and Man-Rabbit (by Mario Ferrigno).

Influences

Kagemono: The Shadow Folk

Winnie the Pooh

Miyazaki

Tyrus Wong

Bambi

The film was definately dedicated towards being childrens entertainment. Films such as Bambi and Winnie the Pooh were primary examples of the direction I wanted to go in, with their delicate, sweet suddleties.

Early Work

^ An animated test composite. There were several intentions of the composite, including:

*Testing the depth of animation with backgrounds.

*Compiling layers and integrating a grid.

*Style development.

*Tones and values.

Style Test

Color boards for the film

Above includes poster designs for the film.

The one farthest left came out during fall quarter and utilized a test background created for style development and testing the parallax effect.

The middle one was created during fall quarter for digital advertising. The third one was created during winter quarter and was used the most frequently.

The Place Where the Rainbows Came From- Layouts

Mount Cielo is a very ellaborate, wonderous land, powered by the beautiful rainbow river that runs through it. There are many sites to see upon visiting the mystical little forest.

The place where the rainbows came from needed to be particularly entrancing as, in reality, it was the main character of the film. Because of this need, very in-depth backgrounds were developed with the help of plant concept artists who brewed fantastic and practical plant ideas.

The first two images below were designs by Mario Ferrigno and the last, largest image was by Claire Belyea.

Layouts and Backgrounds were all completed by Cloud Wilk.