The making of Ethel and Ernest - MAF

This talk was beautiful and a sign that traditional media isn't dying! The first 2D animated feature film to be released in what seems like a while.

Ethel and Ernest a film by Lucas films, is an autobiographical tale of how Raymond Briggs' parents met, married and passed on. Following their lives in short, beautiful and very emotional snippets. It's like your seeing in to an animated window of his past...so much so Raymond Briggs himself said; 'it was like having my mum and dad back in the room with me.' 

For the production they used TV paint to rejuvenate the 2D industry in the UK. 

The animation itself took movements from real life rather than animated features. It was interesting that the music soundtrack was recorded in realtime with the animatic too, the pianist was playing to how he felt when he watched the visuals which was really impressive and interesting.

Why TV paint as a medium? 

They were originally going to animate using paper, however they found the software TV paint looks more authentic than pencil itself. What you see on screen is exactly how it will look when rendered, unlike drawing on paper as some character is lost when scanned in. You can add more character using brush strokes and types. They boiled the watercolour to push through that texture. Overall they used 250 model sheets and 600 backgrounds.

There we so many things they needed to consider, such as ageing characters and clothes change and facial mattes within TV paint. Seen as they were replicating real life time passing.