While i think my hand in went ok, I really need to figure out how to organise my files correctly and why some files were over a Gb. It took almost 15 minutes for my preproduction to upload, while I did do a lot there is no way it should of taken that long.
There are some major improvements I would of like to make to my preproduction, firstly I would of like to put my prop research and concepts in, however, on the day I could not find the file where I have put them, in essence; I was cleaning out my files and I "cleaned" them too well and removed the concepts from the folder- not deleted (I usually move folders I have finished with in to a "used" folder to show that I no longer need it). Therefore with the production project I will not have a warren of folders to navigate through.
Below are the forgotten ones, the images that will be unseen and ungraded.
I would of had these cleaned up and coloured if, I could only find them in my hard drive. *massive mental note - organise your files!!- *
I also submitted for the film brief rather than the show reel as, I do think my 3 scenarios are more film based.
I will be going in to depth about the research that went into my film scenarios and characters for my current project.
For an overview please view my earlier post here.
Edra the Witch
My witch is not an evil witch but she is sassy, comes across as cruel and domineering, perhaps clumsy at times. From these traits a i drew a few rough characters then found some characters that were similar in attitude.
I wanted her to look like a witch, but also have a glamorous appeal. quite like a 50's pin up girl, this lead me to look at characters like Vampira, Elvira, Lily Munster and Morticia Addams (both versions of the character portrayed by Carolyn Jones and Anjelica Huston). In terms of appearene I think these character capture perfectly dark witch/vampiric characters, I wanted this mysterious dark vibe with my own character too. As for personality they all possess an attractive arrogance, that situated them higher than anybody in the room.
Sybill Trelawney
I also wanted to make her a bit bumble-y, I immediately thought of Sybill Trelawney the Professor of Divination from Harry Potter. All these characters I purposely used aesthetic and personality traits from.
As far as animated characters, I looked at Disney's Cruella-de-Vil and the Evil Queen (Queen Grimhilde) From Snow White. They are inherently evil, but I thought I would take this to create a false sense of evil; my witch likes to be intimidating but it is not ultimately who she is this is why I love Cruella's sassiness, she doesn't have anytime for drivel, she just wants things to be her way, she is very much as snob. Like wise with the Evil Queen, just that she is much more two-face about it. I love both of these personality traits and i have studied their expressions and movement.
In terms of design, I like the exaggeration on Cruella's figure and how squinty the Evil Queens eyes can go, both I have implemented in to my character.
Phobos the Cat/Raven
The cat was originally my main character where a Edra the witch was more of a background character, but it later developed that they would feature equally in the scenarios.
I knew that the cat would have some magic ability, maybe a spell gone wrong on Edras part. I was thinking either an odd fur colouration, glowing runes, tattoos maybe a garment like a little witch hat or a saddle bags to put him apart from the rest.
I settled on transformation I dabbled with having him covered with eyes or transforming into array of creatures, I settled with a raven transformation and the eyes .. he is magic after all.
Mouse
Mouse line work, by myself.
He is a one-off character for the Cat & Mouse scenario. He is there to demonstrate my figurative animation, he is a chubby little glutton that tries to steal Phobos' bowl of mile then gets his just desserts.
I am collaborating with my friend Alex Thompson for this, she is designing me a mouse character that would work for the scenario. Click here to see some of her work.
However I do have a couple of concepts myself.
Demon
I had a lot of trouble designing this character, he was going to start off as an imp familiar that would transform into a cat and visa versa. He was meant to be small and mischievous, I still liked the idea so I put it on a back burner. I later realised that I would not have enough time to go into intricate detail of the transformation with the amount of time i had to make a show reel. Since I am now aiming for the film brief now I could of gone into more depth with the transformation of the character. Alas, the character has changed into a demon that Edra summons from a fire and Phobos gets rid off when they realise summoning the creature was a grave mistake.
That is all for Initial research: Characters so far!!
My first idea was to make a sort of documentary animated film about Cormorant fishing in
Japan. I found the idea when reading about the last surviving tribes and people
slicking to the old ways.
Cormorant
fishing is a fishing technique using the Cormorant bird, the fisherman would
tie a loose tie around the cormorants neck and the bird would proceed to catch
fish, the fish unable to go down the birds throat would be caught in the birds
mouth, once the bird had caught enough fish to fill its pouch it would return
to the fisherman where he would dispense the fish in a basket and let the
cormorant eat the smaller fish. The fisherman would have up to 5 birds on his
raft to help him fish.
I found this
process or co-dependency interesting; it had an air of fantasy about it. In fact it had sparked a few other ideas and I had researched other tribes that use animals to hunt, there was a Mongolian Falcon Hunting tribe and another mountain tribe that used horses, falcons and dogs to catch hare and other small creatures.
However my Cormorant fishing idea was the strongest of these and I decided I would portray the traditional technique it in an East Asian in woodblock style or brush/blot ink technique. Using 2D traditional animation with minimal colour.
My story was going to start with the journey of a koi carp in a small lake, it was mostly abstract but it illustrated the day of a cormorant fisherman.
It would reflect my skills in animation people and animals in a figurative sense as well as tackling animating water and ripples.
The Shaman/Druid
I had
several ideas buzzing around at the start and my second strongest was a set a
bit closer to home, it was about Scottish druids. The story was fuzzy but it
was a device mainly to illustrate my capabilities in animation and
illustration.
I was planning to do a lot of figurative animation of a shaman like character casting spells/curses. It was fueled by a lot of research of my previous film Out of Time. And a Scottish folk tale about a dark man-wolf creature that looked after the helpless and punished the evil/greedy.
I was very focused on having the main shaman character being based off a bird either a harbinger of death with the metaphor that he/she can conrtol life. So that left me to choose from a raven or an owl, both omens of death
The design was fantastical of course almost witch doctor/shaman-esque
with a bit of plague doctor mixed in. The other part I had to decide was if they were going to be intimidating or welcoming, or perhaps look different depending on who viewed them.
I liked
researching this idea so much that I thought I would stick in my comfort zone
and develop a witch story; with Halloween so close at this time it seemed to be
my calling. I developed a short story about a cat and witch; the cat collected ingredients
for his witch master to enable her to make spells, charms and potions.
(I then went through the creation progress again, sticking with the bird like features for my witch character, be then deciding against them a lot later into development)
Choosing a
final production, after much research and debate, I decided I would actually
like to make a show reel being as none of my ideas seemed strong enough to
create a 90 second film. I went with
the witch and cat story and fashioned it into scenarios that would work for a
show reel; walk cycles, head turns, hand gestures etc.
From here I have gone on to research my final production, now shaping up to be more of a film than a show reel, so I am now going by the show reel brief as of a couple of weeks ago being as I feel it is more a long the lines of what I want to achieve with this production.
My next update will be Initial Research #2 - the research that when into creating my current project.
