Color chart development, coloring and lights tests

The idea was to acheive the look of old magazines, more precisely - a printing technique that was capable of acheiving richfull images by combining only 2 colors. Apart from that, after first color and lighting tests with most sets, I've realized immediately, on the first set, in the very first days of shooting, I'll be needing some sort of comparison chart for shots to come. Some visualisation of the way shots stick together. To be honest, I've been pretty concerned how would all this going to fit. Why so? The thing is - ANIMATIC is a double-bladed beast: it's simplicity, so essential in early stages of assembling the film, and crucial for conveying character's movments, pays it's toll in another department. Backgrounds. And backgrounds means sets. It's not like I haven't prepared sets in 3D for ANIMATIC, I did. 3D sets were simple, as they should be, but this can be misleading in some occasions. In close-ups particulary, where digital background can be reduced to two-tone flat surface and thus reveals almost nothing about environment. 3D clips, edited together worked fine in ANIMATIC, but suddenly made no sense as guidelines for final film. Nevertheless, that's acceptable. Bigger problem that emerged from simplicity of 3D sets is an ommision of mine, really, something that's hard to spot in computer generated mock-up that ANIMATIC is. To cut expenses and time of production, I planned to use some old puppets and models of houses from my previous film, SOLDAT. It's not so unheard of, and particulary not so having in mind that I intended from the start, designwise, to pick up where I left in Soldat, in pretty much the same maneer. But, the ARCTIC PIRATE has different story, with different mood and goals. Sets in SOLDAT were quite realistic, and puppets weren't far from that, either. Just sligtly naive and crude, to fit the techniques applied, and the "B - movie" premise. But here, on the other hand, in the "Santa Clause story", I needed some magic! Some distorted realities, a little bit more unrealistic puppets, characters with more visual appeal. I made some distorted, bulged sets. Oversized elements on them. And then, just in time to put it in the ANIMATIC, inspired by real person I've passed by on the street, I have redesigned, or - finally designed, my protagonist: Santa Claus got new shape! That "new look" neccesitated other elements to follow the same design pattern - and some, already built sets became unfit for that approach. Becoming aware of this, I did what I could to minimize that differences in style, but it wasn't always possible. Hence this shot - charts, for comparing the visuals. Final images chart is on the top with as much balanced results as possible. Here below, is a first such chart, comprised from test shots, and the few finalized shots, in ratio 2 :1.