Baltic Pipe – stop motion animation

Is it possible to make an animation “about the pipe”, which will be screened at the Szczecin Philharmonic? And its recipients will be min. President and Prime Minister of Poland, Prime Minister of Denmark and a delegation of the Norwegian government? It is possible and we have done it. On September 7, 2022, there was a grand opening ceremony for one of the most important infrastructure investments for Poland. The Baltic Pipe gas pipeline. In short, it’s a pipeline laid mostly on the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Denmark to the Polish coast. For this occasion we were given the opportunity to create an almost 3 minute 2D animation about this investment.

The request came with the reference animation “Once there was a sea…”. This is a heavily artistic production in a drawn, strong line. Two minutes and forty seconds of animation in this style and 2 months for production from scratch? We were taken aback. A task difficult to the max. But we can do it, because why not?

We started thinking about technology. Drawing everything frame by frame in the most traditional form would take many, many months and a lot of people would have to be involved. And we still wouldn’t get such a good hatching effect of the elements. We concluded that we had to combine everything we know best i.e. After Effect, 3D and classic drawn animation…. and this combo would be the best solution. We took the reference animation apart. There we discovered a lot of combinations and subtle cheating. But that’s what all multimedia work is about. After all, it’s the effect that counts!

After a week of sharp deliberation and rehearsals we had it. We made the first sample animation. The client clicked! Wow! All in all, it went easily 😉 So we got down to work hard. The general scheme was simple. 1 We make an animatic. 2 We release frames from it. 3 Drawers based on the released frames draw them at the ready in PS. 4 We put the drawn frames back into AE. 5 We impose effects including the most important hatching.

Target style and storyboard

In order not to waste time (which, after all, we didn’t have) at the same time as the animation sample we worked on the styling and storyboard. We got the initial script from the client. But anyone who works in the industry knows that the most important thing is to translate the client’s vision into reality 😉 Fortunately, we didn’t have much of a problem with that. We assumed that the image should flow like gas in “our pipe”. This was an additional and big challenge in the technology we assumed. And the short time for realization. It would have been easier to do a shot/cut/shot/cut, etc. Pff. But that’s not us. So we gave ourselves some on the barbell 😉 Sometimes wrists fell off from drawing, but the most important thing was the effect. After all, it’s for the Philharmonic, the opening of Baltic Pipe, and not just anyone’s eyes were going to see it.

frame from animation – our first style suggestion

Baltic Pipe storyboard page

Animatik

Styling patched up, story almost, because there were still minor scrubs going on. We got down to what is really the most important thing. ANIMATIK. He had to be patched 100%, with no possibility of changes. After all, it was from him that we released the frames, which were later drawn in a laborious way. Our animatik is a collage of photos, drawings, stock videos, videos we recorded ourselves, etc. But it gave us a nice smooth picture with the flow of all the action.

The production itself is sharp logistics and really a lot of plowing. What you’ll see below will sound pretty twisted, but that’s what it looked like. Animation created at 12 frames per second. That gives 2160 frames to create! It came out to about 150 per day. Practically unmanageable. In addition, we had to get a hatching effect on the image. So the combo we developed was the only saving grace. Counterintuitively, instead of drawing the whole 2160 drawings, it was easier for us to break the individual frames into elements. We released sequences of frames from the animatic. These were individual elements from the frame or whole frames depending on the needs. It happened that one frame was released into several elements. For illustration and understanding we throw in an example from frame 0071.

frame_71 Baltic Pipe

frame 0071 broken into layers

On this basis, the illustrator / draftsman for each item had to create two or more layers. The basis was two layers. One with outline and the other with fill.

element with an array broken into layers – here there are 4 – outline, fill, name, shadow.

And why did we make life so complicated for ourselves? Well, there were two reasons. And with these procedures we managed to embrace both problems.

• First, we wanted to get the best possible hatching effect in the image. We applied the hatch effect in the form of a mask to individual elements (like outline or fill) in After Effects. By doing so, we were able to influence the readability and appearance. We wanted the individual hatch elements to be in their own style. With different widths or different intensities. This also gave the effect of a lot of naturalness to the time-lapse drawing. A given hatching on one element did not look good on another. The outline hatching had to be smaller than on the fill, etc.. So we had to approach each element individually.
• After 2. Works drawn by many artists / illustrators often differ strongly in appearance. This is simply due to the individual character and way of drawing. Unfortunately, this is also often seen in the works, including the reference we received. Shots occurring in succession look like they are from different works. This is what we wanted to avoid.

Therefore, after determining what brushes we use for what. How we fill and how we shade. Imposing masks and effects in “after” made the image unified. Each shot took on the same character and look.

brushes

The end result of the Baltic Pipe animation

And with this, 6 draftsmen in 108 photoshop files created 4662 layers. Later everything was milled in AE. Hundreds of compositions and subcompositions. Applying masks and hatching effects. And there it is. We could celebrate 🙂