Flooby Nooby: August 2019

Here's an analysis of the compositions and colors of Minkyu Lee's 2011 film "Adam and Dog".

See the short film here.

It was nominated for Best Animated Short Film for the 85th Academy Awards and won Best Animated Short Subject at the 39th Annie Awards. It is a retelling of the Adam and Eve story (as found in the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis), but from a Dog's point of view. Dog wanders around, alone. Then one day he meets a strange creature, Adam. Side by side, they spend their days in the flourishing garden, and become inseparable companions - until a new creature arrives: Eve. After meeting this new companion, who is similar to him, Adam neglects Dog. But after the Fall of Man, when the two Humans must leave the Garden, he consorts with them into the realm of hardship.

First off, lets look at samples of rough line tests from the film.
The movement of the characters on screen will always affect the shot's composition. The space they occupy within the frame and how they move inside the frame makes the staging organic and ever-changing.

by Jennifer Hager

by James Baxter

by Jennifer Hager

For the sound design, Vladimir Sivc wanted to leave room for the music and let the sounds themselves lead the story. Much of the sound design was created with his voice and effects like the hippo was simply his voice pitched down with a tremolo (vibrating effect) mixed with the reverb. Dog sounds were also created with him barking into a condenser mic, and kept modifying the tone until it worked, and other vocals were used for many of the birds as well. All other SFX was recorded with a zoom H4n and Rode NTG1 shotgun microphone.

Written and Directed by: Minkyu Lee

Animation by:
Minkyu Lee
Jennifer Hager
James Baxter
Mario Furmanczyk
Austin Madison
Matt Williames

Associate Producer:
Heidi Jo Gilbert

Technical Direction:
Ethan Metzger

Musical Score:
Joey Newman

Consultants:
Glen Keane
Thomas Ethan Harris

Various versions of the 'rule of thirds', centered compositions, diagonal lines/shapes, negative space, leading lines, repeating elements, clear silhouettes, and the use of dynamic symmetry and dynamic rectangles are methods seen in many of the compositions for this film.

Hand-drawn character animation + hand-painted background art. Natural color palettes are used, from the sunny, joyful sequences to the dark, rainy somber ones. Even bright sunny days are treated with a fairly muted earth-tones color design.

Observe the astounding hand-drawn cinematography of Adam & Dog.

Expertly staged and planned out, Point of View shots like these use the classic "shot / reverse-shot" to connect the audiences with these characters, seeing what they see and in doing so helping to experience what the on-screen characters are experiencing, which feeds into every animated filmmaker's ultimate goal: to convince the audience that there's a thought process going on inside the characters' heads, that you can tell what they are thinking and feeling.

Wide shots tell us where they are and uses visual storytelling to inform us of the environment they're in. The closer we frame the characters in the shots, the more intimate it becomes, the more we can tell what they're thinking and feeling the more that it shows us about the character, and what they're doing.