Creative Process | Autodale's "FRIENDLY SHADOW"

hello my name is David in this video I will be covering the frankly shadow character from my auto Dale animated series who he is what he is his design process and my general creative workflow bringing this character to life please enjoy [Music] the friendly shadow is a tool used by ordeal to handle delicate or dangerous situations that the handymen proved incapable of handling themselves problems arise an ordeal from time to time and occasionally a more subtle touch and the thinking mind are required to fix those problems to things that the handymen are incapable of to justify his dangerous and bizarre escapades to the public all deal have crafted a persona around him me poppy noir vigilante detective Mayer CD protector they're friendly shadow I've had the idea to create character for years a pulpy Dick Tracy's ro vigilante tape or old school radio drama serial detective with n the auto deal universe by wasn't totally sure where to go with the idea from there it wasn't until August 2019 when I finally wrong a quick synopsis for the character and drew this image there are certain aspects about this character that fascinated me a shady protector detective a cyborg cowboy versus a sewer monster a friendly shadow keeping the nighttime ordeal streets safe these were all concepts I wanted to explore and from there the idea just continued to flourish and evolve [Music] what the Friendly shadow was a detective gunslinger sent to fix problems and fake monsters was nailed down who he was was a real issue for me to figure out early on the first idea I had was to make him East Street up terrifying an efficient machine a very cold and calculating machine with a face that doesn't move almost exactly like the version of him you see in the final film gunned down the adult freak this character went through a lot of iterations I flip-flopped between is he a good guy or is he a bad guy for months the very first version of this script didn't have the little girl in it at all just the two freaks and the shadow it was totally empathy West and cruel the friendly shadows still he called and calculating bad guy killed the mother freak and took the kid freak too high for study and dissection instead of disobeying and freeing the child like in the final film I started work on that cruel version of the film all of the 3d assets I built for the film and a small chunk of my sketchbook was for that version but it became very apparent very quickly that that level of beams buried miss not only from the film but especially our main character was just no very fun to watch instead I went in the opposite direction just promise me my daughter will be okay if your daughter is old novel promise me she'll be okay after you save her promise me she'll be joining her brothers and not me please I promise what if this is the first film in the audio series to have a protagonist the straight-up disobeys auto-dial is a dystopia the brain washes its citizens with propaganda into believing their authoritarian town is a utopia and all other films in the series depict the successful brainwashing or indoctrination of its citizens this is really the first time we've ever seen a character that doesn't care for the way this town works a character that shows resistance not just a child that may have doubts but an adult who knows more about how ordeals run than anyone else we've ever seen and he cannot stand it from there I fell I finally had a solid character to biess a compelling form around while designing this character I often drew him with along train school or duster jacket I just always pictured him with a long black cool eye you really was not happy with the look of this character until I removed that trench coat the moment that coat was gone the character suddenly started to make sense now without the cool you can clearly see his arms he's clearly part robot but not just any robot he's part handyman and was also here where I came up with the idea to have this be a conscious choice the Friendly shadow makes to distance himself from his on-screen propaganda image and all of his comic books and films he's depicted with a long black trench coat in reality he refuses to wear a-- and passive defiance of Auto Dale he does not care for his media depictions and actively tries to distance himself from that [Music] the character design itself didn't take me as long as I expected some of my characters take just three or four sketches for me to be happy with and some characters take fifty or sixty sketches and a sculpture for me to finally be happy with the friendly shadow of only took me around ten or eleven drawings to get here and from this image I was pretty satisfied I knew exactly what I wanted this character to look like the final 3d model and reg were mostly based off of these three final sketches with the designer pretty much finalized I got to work 3d modeling texturing and wrecking the character to be used in the I made short film itself I started with my update meals is in model removed the texture removed his arms and removed his head a deed handyman arms and from there felt in the blanks the Friendly shadow is half handyman and half human so only made sense for a 3d model tube literally consists of human and handyman assets the friendly shuttle needed a gun detectives and Cowboys both have guns I don't like the idea of giving allodial traditional firearms I knew that if I was going to give the friendly shadow a firearm it was going to have to be something creative Porter Dale does not have bullets but Auto Dale does have electricity lightning bolts Tesla coil type of electricity which you only ever see the closer and closer you get to the heart of the city I liked the idea of a firearm that Shaw electric reports of Tesla lightning its target far more than a traditional tommy gun or revolver which would also aesthetically tie the friendly shadow and his gun closer to the terrifying heart of the city and not happy suburbia I only drew like four or five doodles of that gun it's trite more like a classic sci-fi fifties ray gun and slowly evolved into a more over-the-top lightning revolver I am very aware that a revolver doesn't make any sense this gun has an obvious wheel that does not have a function and it doesn't use bullets and it never seems to need reloading but the way I saw detectives have small revolver scope boys have big revolvers the Friendly shadow was always get a hammer of over there are a loss of details in the way the shadow is Anna made and wrecked her own thing his eyes dilate when he switches from tints to calm and Wayne and his more robotic and lethal mood he talks without moving his lips the girls not the artists hive she's only been here an hour this is his room these are his boys he talks by blinking the many lights on his face just like hive does but my favorite subtle detail about the curtly friendly shadows character model is that his face is not rendered the same way as the rest of the film his face is rendered with altitude shaders it's not cell shading and there's a soul cracked texture to it his face looks odd in the frame which is an effect I'm very happy with the public are scared of the Friendly shadow they're disturbed by his face because they live in a society where it's the norm to wear a mask I wanted that face even if it can look friendly sometimes to have an unsettling quality to it there are only two things in this film that are rendered the seem off we the Friendly shadows faces and that's all of hives faces showing their connection and the mothers Auto Dale masks her fake creepy smiling face covering her real crying one considering that the citizens of audial find the Friendly shadows neat public when he could face it miss him I was sailing themselves I felt this was an effective and subtle way of subconsciously translating that to the audience it's a small detail but they think a very very effective one man can you tell me anything about what happened what did you see the friendly shadow is played by me I think my performance is good but I voice every single male character in the whole auto deal series and I feel the friendly shadow has been one too many it's starting to show toys such imaginative and wondrous things I always write this one with a capital T because I think this is where I'm from I was kinda hoping that the cycle would never end hey it's okay now I made a promise to a real respectable lady upstairs that I bring you back in one piece I didn't want to voice the character it was never the plan I had about 12 voice actors trio and maybe two or three of them would have worked if I was willing to workshop the voice and burst personality with them Abed by wasn't I totally avoided fainting a voice actor for this character until the phone was about three weeks from release and at that point I had no time and I just did all the lines myself I create these films all on my own and I feel I've gone into the habit of walling myself and and doing as much of these things as I can on my own I think I subconsciously well not let someone else do work I feel I can do myself and I feel the film suffered oil because of that his voice in this film on its own sounds fine but if you watch the whole series I think you could definitely notice that everybody shares the same voice auto deal is a dystopian society that runs on an everlasting cycle essence are bred to be as happy and productive as possible behalf children raise replacements for themselves and then they are disposed of this cycle has gone on almost completely unchanged for thousands of years every citizen wants to be pretty and every once in a while a truly exceptional says an is born a citizen with a mind or a talent that is worth preserving at a town that is useful for maintaining the town these exceptional citizens are taken into the center of town and are assimilated into audio calls hive this immortal biomechanical comp of and ancient human bodies and mains essentially runs the town they make all the decisions with puppets such as the handyman and the Friendly shadow being mere messengers the Friendly shadow was one of the seasons he's a special case too he was once another a mobile piece of hive but he was given a body and free mobility for his exceptional scale was tied to his problem solving he's smart adaptive and efficient and when all deal needed a more delicate and thinking mind on the ground they chose him he would make a great detective and internally created the friendly shadow persona for him the friendly shadow as part of hive as a lot of his visual design which suggests he's just a piece with more mobility and freedom than most [Music] if this smelly bag of hundred-year-old organs encased in a robotic framework is to walk around in public all the deal would have to make him presentable they've informed the public that his character exists through his films comic books TV shows and radio dramas Auto Dale have given him a very edgy dark and mysterious image he's a dangerous figure that should be avoided but he keeps them safe he's a spooky shadow but he's a friendly one in that in his comic and film depictions he has to say it's a good cop side and a bad cop side this is something I saw in the short film it's an aspect I would have loved to have explored farther the Friendly shadow is half human and half machine and those two sides turn on and off like a light switch given the situation and he tries very desperately to suppress the more brutal cold and efficient machine side of himself auto-dial citizens idealize being machine like we suppress their individuality they want to be just like everybody else this mentality is what they're raised on and if they don't conform their label is ugly under Celt everybody wants to be like the handyman do-gooder peacekeeping faceless robots these people we're full face masks in public as a symbol of how see me they are they all want to be faceless functional cogs in the greater auto-dial machine the friendly shadow is so feared by the majority of audio's public because both for one he is disruptive where he goes the norm changes but more importantly the family shadow as an individual an individual that publicly shows his own face this is very off-putting to most who live in the town regardless of him being mostly machine the Friendly shadow is tired and he knows a more about who this a works than possibly anyone else in it he doesn't like it the longer he lives the more resentful he grows towards the machine side of himself and the more he cannot stand the sight of the propagandist bowing handyman the more he lives on working under hives thumb the more he's learned to care for human beings and he has developed a lot of sympathy for their causes I'm sorry the family shuttle does not want to do what Hotel tells them to do in all of us depictions and all deals media he is seen wearing a long black trench coat and reality he refuses to wear that he wants to disassociate himself from the image as much as possible people are scared of that image and he likes people he doesn't want to frighten them I think there is no Cena that portrays the friendly shadows discussed over Auto deal and has a funny towards being human than the scenes between him and the girl's mother oh please forgive them I was scared of you too when I was a kid in all the comic books and films I mean you're not so scary in person you look different without the coat after the freak attack that caused the death of her husband destroyed two handyman and the kidnapping of her door the Friendly shadow asks the mother if she saw anything if there's anything she can tell him about what happened what did you see nothing I took the boys and we ran we hid in the house this is a lie before the scene starts the Friendly shadow finds a children's drawing sitting on the ground depicting the little girl and the Freak playing together with the girl's parents and glaring at them through the window the mother and father were both very aware that their child had been playing with monsters she does not tell the shadow about this because if Otto Dell knew her daughter would be killed for it the mother remains quiet and strong and willing to face punishment for her support failure isn't until the Friendly shadow shows some legitimate sympathy for her cause when she finally lets her armor crackle oh sorry just promise me my daughter will be okay if your daughter's know promise me she'll be okay after you safe promise me she'll be joining her brothers and not me this woman has total faith and the friendly shadows abilities to bring her daughter back safely in one piece the mother is not begging the friendly shuttle to save her daughter from the Beast she's begging the friendly shadow to save her daughter from auto deal she is asking him to break the rules [Music] a promise and being who he is he of course makes a promise that her daughter will be saved from sharing the same fate as our he disagrees with this as well you're a lot less scary without the coat this light you're a lot less scary without the court means more to the Friendly shadow than the mother could possibly imagine and cements his unbreakable promise the Friendly shadow is poor human and anti machine which is a sentiment likely not shared by anyone else in the city this is the first character we've really ever seen in this series that does not agree with her auto dealers run and actively rebels in the house [Applause] [Music] if you're at all interested in reading my sketchbooks getting regular updates on upcoming animation projects are just supporting the in general please check out my patreon page full high-resolution photographs of all of my animation sketch books are available before they are including the whole auto tale series thank you so much for watching everyone next week I'll be covering hive special thanks to Leslie lizard ryan tarpon ibaka bean Kirk Watson Ashley ninja of orthanc Sam Nelson George story guardian of energy Trask alias Jordan native trousers thomas water using the Kalpa castle Sabrina key Fatima Hernandez mister padalka donk happy purple part clean Soderbergh Matthew Bailey Chuck Thurmond - Vernon Courtney Sartain VI Waller Slaven off Carl eats hands Meghan rougarou jean-claude Paquin pilla prisoner Devon Manor I'm Alex Harry Ewa Neil Patterson Maxwell Kenneth Monday Dec dog king cruise G right Luke's Grimm meet Anna madness Matt - Shawn hunter Pearson pepper Blackburn cage Danish crew test Wamba onii-chan RC NFL Toby Harkema Lundy quejas Chadbourne Smith Dee Snider mint a junkie our plant Clara patina barman major kickass last two angry Zeno J Frederick Henry the Cthulhu kid shadow - Nathan Michelle Barrera LBJ rule oscar the Manny teen press Balkan Josh Phooey while a sky 15 barrel Oberyn Aryan when Warren potato therapist Roma skies vector vector fruits Lord Shepherd juju cats mark white Hannah no Austin hosen nicholas t race organized chaos rogue blade jockey winners whitey to go Amy Britney Garcia mark where Carmen G&L indie ref - electric Boogaloo David music serene Michael Fontana Valentino Leben Monte treat Michael Wilkinson Adam Quinton Coley Minoru 3 a9 Marshall took a more vesper le the fabulous Chaka Christina Rey is the and granny Wow Jesus that's real humbling thank you very much

Channel: Dead Sound

Views: 379,796

Rating: 4.9886303 out of 5

Keywords: animated short, animated short film, pixar, disney, animation, animated movie, creepy, beautiful, creepypasta, retro, dystopian, dystopia, behind the scenes, making of, autodale

Id: UY8rCPsJC_Q

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2020