With the finished layout we head to the animation stage with the animators Igor Estevão, João Rodrigues and Samuel Alves. At this stage, the character development is achieved mainly by good management of time between each key drawing. At a second stage, intermediate drawings, strictly drawn between each drawing delivered by the animator, are developed mostly by Margarida Pereira, Dário Santos, Susana Correia and David Silva.
Shot 23
Hi, Im Igor Estêvão and I am the person responsible for the animation of the 23rd shot. In this shot, the intention of the director was to show the effect caused by Mário's inner turmoil, creating a mass contamination around.
For this, we joined all bodies in a single movement. This movement is born in Mário's character to then be extended over the other characters, forming, at the end, a single body who breathes with one single voice.
Being Mário the center of contagion, I began by animating him first, keeping in mind a moving, cyclical speed, which gradually loses intensity.
When the proposed base movement (key positions) was accepted by the director, I started to animate the characters who were closer to Mário, who turn out to be the most affected by the contagion. For this, I had in mind Mário's movement extending in a string, like the links of a chain, that would influence each one of the characters, later ending up by losing intensity gradually.
And so, from character to character, deceleration to deceleration and time difference between each character, I got to the final result: 15 characters with distinct movements, linked together to convey the mass contamination idea. The lines and red numbers placed in the upper right corner indicate to the intercalators each drawing's number and relative position, in order to get the accelerations, decelerations and required breaks.
Shot 83
I'm João and I had the privilege to be a part in the Fragments' animation process. The film was my first professional experience, so I was a little afraid and a bit contained about what I could give to the final product. I was absorbed in this process for the first 6 months until I felt truly comfortable to risk and not merely make the characters move, but give them life. Fortunately, I was able to animate very different shots, the shot 83 and the shot 87 are great examples of that. The shot 83, for example, required a lot of acting, due to the fact the character interacting with no one but himself, eventually beeing the only action in the shot.
This was a challenging shot on a technical level, because it simulated a semi low-angle shot, which requested for an anormal degree of complexity in the design, compared to other shots. On the other hand this was one of the shots that needed a deeper psychological characterization. Regarding the execution time, this shot was an exception for being animated at two separate times for about five months. Zé initially thought that what he had animated (until Mané removing the two boots) would be enough to portray Mané's decision, but after a first editing draft, we realized the shot needed to be longer and more intense to better link with the live action Mané's naked body. So I animated him undressing the sweater.
Shot 87
The shot 87 required for a completely different type of approach, the fact that this is a moment of high tension and suspense. So we limited the animation to a minimum.
The tension was the main focus here, the pauses followed by various blinks of an eye and then an abrupt action by the character was what we were looking for, rather than an expansive and violent acting as was shot 83.
Shot 97
Here the challenge was to find the various marching cycles adapted to each character, and thus achieve a good balance of power and weight between each body on the moment of impact and fall.
Thus, this three shots' animation was developed at once, continuously, in this long and laborious shot. At a later stage we reframed each one of the shots and animated the side camera movement that follows the characters.
