Flatworld, an 30mins animation short film, makes use of both 2D and 3D animation techniques to manipulate an idea of dimension to audience.
...ontrast in one picture. Therefore, the impact of “real and unreal” is strengthened and in this time, those 2D characters cannot create much illusion of three dimension when they acting with 3D stuff. The name, Flatworld, is best fit to this animation. So how flat it is? First of all, Daniel takes use of cardboard, which is flat in shape in nature, to set up the “Flatworld” environment, character and stuff. When shooting them in perspective view, they are flatted. Moreover, those cardboards are originally with strong texture, and the effect is strengthened when under specific lighting. I believe both the “3Ded Flatworld” and 2D flipped world contain FLAT elements. For “3D Flatworld”. Though the use of cardboard (character) is flat in perspective, however, it is shot frame by frame by a perspective camera (not shot vertically) and under lighting. That results the cardboard became a 3D object, a flat 3D object’s movement. And this “3D object” almost shown as either in side, front or back view of particular object. All together it makes the object with a thin depth. So it makes a 3D object looks like 2D. Although it is a 3D environment in 3D Flatworld, the characters tended to be in 2D mode most of the time. In this 2D mode, since characters were drawn by the use of cel animation and recorded vertically, it creates an 3 dimensions of height, width and depth, or in other words they are changing perspective themselves on their own 2D plane that layered to a 3D environment. Audience could easily defined where the characters are in 2D or 3D firstly because of its brightness and lightness color. Both the figures above are showing the character with a tiny depth, however, Fig1 was a 2D character while Fig2 was 3D. In Fig1, a human character was drawn on a human like cardboard. It color lightness was matched with the environment lights which the orange color on his shirt tended to be brighter on the left and darker on right (light source from the left). Moreover, he also had a lightness shadow and on this cardboard surface, and there seemed a little bit reflection of the environment and light on his shirt. And as he was moving, that reflection seemed also animated on his shirt too. On the other side in Fig1, the fish seemed didn’t have much color lightness regarded to the real lighting. Also, both the fish and the glass of the container didn’t show a reflection of envir...