Elle

About
Elle is an uncompleted short film that I got to help out for a short amount of time. It's a story that revolves around a nightlight fairy that can't be seen by humans, and about a little boy who the fairy protects.  My role was going to be shading and lighting for the film, and during pre-production I was able to make a few concepts that would help me for that part of the pipeline. For now the production has been stopped, and I'm hoping that sometime in the future it will get worked on again.


 

Research

Elle is a nightlight fairy and she's suppose to glow like a nightlight. I spent a lot of time researching nightlights and observing how light passes through different kinds of nightlight materials. Overall, it was important that elle would have a soft, subtle glow to represent her soft, kindhearted character. The reference I gathered below were nightlights that I thought worked best for how her shaders would look. 
 

Concept Art

Elle is a simple designed character, and I felt she had a lot of potential for showing her emotions through her shaders. Since she's a lightsource, she could emit different colors of light depending on her current emotional state. 

On the left is a simple, rough chart of hue changes that could represent different emotional states of Elle.  My color choices were based on color theory and how certain colors can evoke a particular mood. 

On the right, was a chart to show an idea of how her color could change as her mood changed. A neutral color wasn't chosen at the time, so I started with a blue color to test out. As she grew angrier, her f

Elle's mood chart
Down below are the different moods Elle would have and potentially look if she was experiencing a particular mood. 
On the left was my first pass with a variety of moods to select from. We ended up liking most, however we didn't need anger or disgust, since the character would never experience that emotion during the story. The only thing we weren't settled on was the color blue Elle would be if she were sad. 

On the right was my second pass, preserving the colors that were approved in the first pass and adding a variety of blues to choose from for sadness. We ended up liking #2.

Color Scripts

These were fun to make, since I haven't worked with a night time color palette before. 

These are color scripts for the first two shots of the film.  The room was originally suppose to be dark and scary for the little boy when the lights are off, and Elle's light was there to illuminate and make the darkness disappear. Her glow would be a soft blue light that the boy was comforted by.  We weren't quite set on the idea her color would be blue however, 

Eventually the story changed a bit, and the room was no longer meant to be a dark and scary place for the boy when the lights weren't on. Elle was also going to be a warm, yellow-ish color.