Animation Development

This is going to end up as another pre-production project... Even more work to do. I could combine this project and the negotiated project but I feel I wouldn't enjoy it as much. I have my own idea for a story with this one. It just came into my head while I was in Derek's lecture. It has romance, murder and Apocalypse's. Everything a film needs right? I would love to take this on as a third year project as well, but it would be feature length... But maybe I could do a pretty trailer for it? Oh the possibilities.

Its a boy meets girl plot with a twist. I wont give away the rest yet. But I do want it to be very bright and visual even if its set in a pre-apocalyptic world. I want to do the character design for the boy and girl and maybe two others, a couple of background designs for the streets and some concepts I am keeping in my head for it. If I have time I might be able to put together the animatic for the opening scene. But with the amount of work from the other projects I don't think I will be able to. Well that's my idea... Standby for more updates...

Starting the Negotiated Brief

Well the negotiated brief is all about setting ourselves targets. We could either go with something we would be comfortable doing, or we could go for something we had never tried before or wanted to improve on. I really enjoyed the last pre-production project so I thought I would have a go at that again.

We had to pitch our ideas to Kathy and Georg, I had decided I just wanted to do a production bible, however they both suggested I push myself a bit further and do a storyboard to go with it. Sounds like a lot of work... that's because it is!! Ahhhh!! I think it will be OK, I just have to plan it out carefully...

I am going to do a pre-production bible and storyboard for an adaptation of the teenage fiction 'Lord Sunday' by Garth Nix. This is the final book of a series of seven all named after the days of the week. I choose this book because it contains great character descriptions and I can really picture it in my mind when I read it... Now I just have to get the thoughts from my head onto paper.... The final outcomes from this project will be:

• Character Designs
• Background Deisigns
• Concept Work
• Storyboard of one chapter

All presented nicely in a bible...

More Essaying....

As if the last essay wasn't enough to stress me out... Here's another two more! Although I was plesently suprised at my grade. I think the general feel from the animator is that essays are evil. I know writing defiantly isn't one of my strong points... This time we have to do another literature review and a film analysis. I still going along with my theme of representation of woman in animation and have looked at the texts:

• Elizabeth Bell, Somatexts at the Disney Shop
• Amy M Davis, Good Girls and Wicked Witches
• Jayne Pilling, Women in Animation: A Compendium

The first two focus more on Disney's influence on how women are represented in animation, while Pilling looks at the work of independant female animators.

Oh yeah, I had better mention that I want to look at the differences in the representation of womoen between comercial animation and independant animation. There you go, that's my perspective for now.

The animation I looked at for my analysis is a girls night out. And here it is:

More textures

This is my design for the sky dome in Stress fest. Adam wanted a sunset on different layers so he could change the colours to suit the animation in post.

This is the sign post texture map. Its painted so it looks quite rustic and grubby.