Group Work

I quite like the way Sin City and Pulp Fiction use two stories, with the first story wrapping around the second.

Example of Sin City, Josh Hartnett’s character killing a woman on a balcony, and the film finishes with Josh Hartnett (even though he hasn’t been seen since the first scene and his story has nothing to do with the main story) again, with him offering a cigarette to a girl, which implies he has been sent to murder her too.

We as a group would like to use this style.

The Date

Interlace *** with credits

***
Trevor is driving up to Ashley’s house (Infection by RX bandits on stereo). The first date is always nervy. This time he spared no expense,
all of the money he had earned that month was going on the date, but that was not much, a waiters job does
not really pay, especially for a 16 year old.
Walking along the garden path towards the door, all he could think about is how beautiful she was.
***
Turns off stereo

(Thought bubble above character with girls image)

He walked up the steps and knocked on the door. Took a deep breath and clutching the flowers he had brought her,
tightly in his hand. The door opens.

(Front view of Trevor, glow on face. Then cuts to a fat man standing in the door).

The boy smiles at the miserable fat man and his daughter squeezes in-between then both. The boy grins and gives
the girl the flowers. The girl looks unimpressed and walks down the path.
cut in to main story

Chris walks out of close turns on iPod with Forever Lost by God is an Astronaut, and walks in to subway. Fade to shot of crowd focused on a gorgeous girl (Lesley) coming up on the opposite escalator (on way up from subway) towards Chris. (song changes to Here we Go Again by OKGO) Cut to shot of intense lustful look as Chris and Lesley pass At the bottom of the escalator he finds Lesley’s Security pass for Metro Airport. Cut to Chris on subway, Lesley in thought bubble. cut to Chris at work on phone, "we need you here for a meeting plan". Chris books flight out of Metro airport because he remembers Lesley works there. Chris in metro Airport sees Lesley.. cut to Rangerover driving through glass wall, terrorist gets out with C4 strapped to him. He pushes button but nothing happens, he looks confused. Chris then punches him. cut to Chris and Lesley kissing.

Zoom out to the words
The End
On a cinema screen

Zoom out from cinema screen to Trevor’s date

Back of Jess and Trevor’s head . Trevor’s arm around Jess, Trevor says good movie huh? They kiss.

Roll end credits with thanks to bands © 2008 JAR productions

Lip Sync and weight

"Back off man, i'm a scientist"
Lip sync in Flash.



Basic lifting animation i drew.
(Based on me) well... more my friend who lifted a bag so i could watch his movements.
It was a good refrence to use and i plan to use this for facial expression for the animation my group is currently creating.

Flash v.s. Toon-boom

A breif evaluation:

Personally I prefer Flash. It is the one I have used since I started to animate. The drawing tools are very good and similar to Photoshop that I have used since I was 16.

The flash layout it a lot easier to find your way around than Toon Boom. I also found lip sync easier in flash though a lot of people I know found Toon Boom better. The example below that was of a music video for Radiohead, was done in flash, and for me, shows how well it works.

At the end of the day, I prefer Flash. I know how to work it, its limitations when animating and how to make the most of it. Toon boom over complicates everything and makes any easy task take longer than it should to animate.

The "Other" ideas

Some more possible animation I wanted to try was something along the lines of a music video. After watching a flash animation for “creep- by Radiohead”, I was inspired to do something to music.

I also saw a comedian do a visual representation of a song that was funny as he acted out the works.

My last idea that I had was involving a driving test. It would start with a front view of the car with the learner driver already in the car. The instructor gets into the car and then they drive off. The learner would do lots of things like missing an old women crossing the road and going through red lights, speeding over a hill, high speed police chase. Eventually they end back at the test centre where the instructor has lost his calm exterior and is now a nervous wreck. The learner driver would keep the same empty grin expression all the way through.

Story: "The Date"

This is one of the stories that I was working on before creating the “Love Story” about the rat catcher and the rat. The detail in the story below is not to the same level as the “Love Story”, but that is only I did not explore the story and its possibilities as I was not going to create an animation on it. I tried to focus my time on more productive things.

Trevor is walking up to Ashley’s house. The first date is always nervy. This time he spared no expense, all of the money he had earned that month was going on the date, but that was not much, a waiters job does not really pay, especially for a 16 year old.
Walking along the garden path towards the door, all he could think about is how beautiful she was.

(Thought bubble above character with girls image)

He walked up the steps and knocked on the door. Took a deep breath and clutching the flowers he had brought her, tightly in his hand. The door opens.

(Front view of Trevor, glow on face. Then cuts to a fat man standing in the door).

The boy smiles at the miserable fat man and his daughter squeezes in-between then both. The boy grins and gives the girl the flowers. The girl looks unimpressed and walks down the path.

(The story will then show them buying tickets at the movies, and then sit down watching a movie, probably Spiderman. The scene where Spiderman and the girl kiss comes on and Trevor moves his arm around the girl. The movie then shows Spiderman’s head devour the girls. Trevor looks horrified and moves his arm slowly away.)

The Story

Main Character
Name: Chris Davidson
Job: Rat Catcher
Age: 27
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 11 Stone
Home Town: Dumfries
Favourite Food: Cheesy Pasta
Faverurte Past Time: Drawing with crayons
Description of Character: Has been working hard as a rat catcher for 12 years. He works hard but too much in some peoples opinion and he finds it hard to get out because of the work.

Other characters:
Rat
Baby rats

Locations:
Outside Office Building
Room in an Office Building
Paris
Church
Bedroom
Living Room

Sound Samples Used:
Intro Music
Romantic Music (violin music?)
French Music (possible tie in with the Romantic Music?)
Wedding Music
Background Music
Rat Trap
Phone Ringing

Story:
Chris is lying in his bed sound asleep. There is no movement in the room and the only light comes from a digital clock showing the early hour of day. The phone rings and wakes him up. He slowly reaches over to grab the phone, picks it up and listens to the man on the other side. He nods his head slowly, his eyes showing a tired expression. He then goes out into his van and drives to the job.
He arrives at the Office where the man on the phone told him to go. It’s still dark and the dim lights from the streetlamps only just illuminate the pavement in front of him. He gets out of his van and walks towards the office doors, which have a large sign hanging above with the name of the company on it. Chris walks inside.
Entering an ill-lighted room and places a rat trap, with a slice of cheese on top, at one end of the room and then he backs into a corner and waits for the rat. A large clock on a far wall moves slowly round as Chris plays the waiting game with the rat. In a darkened corner of the room, some glaring un-human eyes glowing dark red appear. Slowly a cautious rat emerges from the shadows and moves towards the trap.
As the rat moves closer, Chris looks into its eyes as the rat sniffs the cheese. The rat stops in its tracks and stares back, and as Chris looks deeper into the rats eyes, he smiles.

-Cut scene-
Chris and the Rat have a romantic meal in Paris with music playing in the background. Chris cuts up some cheese on a plate and uses a fork to feed the rat.
Chris and the Rat are now in a church, saying there “I do’s”.
Chris and the Rat are in bed together, they both smile and the screen slowly fades to a white screen, then fades back in to show Chris and the Rat sitting on the sofa whit lots of little rats running round.
-End Cut scene-

Chris coming back to reality realises what is about to happen to this poor rat and jumps across the room in a slow motion 80’s TV style movement. His head gets stuck in the trap. The rat looks at Chris and he looks at the rat and smiles. The rat then runs up towards him, takes the cheese, looks at him again and runs off.
A tear runs down Chris’s face.

The End.

Basic Outline of story

The following is a brief outline to the story i have layed out, the full version of the story as it stands at the moment will be published later tonight. Many edits have been made to the story so far, but only in the length. The basic story has remained the same right the way through.

This story will have no speaking. My reasons for this are that after wacthing the movie "red Ballon", i decided that i would use sound effects and music to there best advantage and creat mood and realism though them. To better portray emotion of a character though facial expression rather than voice.

Main Character
Name: Chris
Job: Rat Catcher
Age: 27
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 11 Stone
Home Town: Dumfries
Favourite Food: Pasta
Description of Character: Has been working hard as a rat catcher for 12 years. He works hard but too much in some peoples opinion and he finds it hard to get out because of the work.

Other characters
Rat

Locations
Outside Office Building
Room in an Office Building
Paris (cafe overlooking landmarks)
Church (view from alter to back door so as to veiw a couple)
Bedroom (frontal veiw of bed)

Sound Samples Used
Intro Music
Romantic Music (violin music?)
French Music (possible tie in with the Romantic Music?)
Wedding Music
Background Music
Rat Trap
Phone Ringing

Chris

After repeated computer problems, the biggest being my computer dying, everything is now back up and running.

Here is my main character chris.

The Head of Chris

This is the head design of the main character called chris. So far it is jsut his head, but the body will be done this week. :)

Character

I am Happy with my main character called Chris. Maybe a slightly simplier version for the actual animation, but Jess will still need a lot of work as she looks out of place. Trying to make a more catroony feel as the animation i will end up doing will probably be more homourus than some amazingly revolutionary animation.

The reason chris looks like the way he does is the he should be easier to animate while keepin some sence of realism about him. Though his arms need to be shorter, and ones a little too long.

Rough Work

Just uploading some more rough work.

working through different character designs, hair ideas etc. I dont know which style i will go for, it will all depend on the story itself, as to if it requires lots of action movement or if it will be a funny piece.

Music

One of the ideas i had was for a musical theme band thing. After thinkin about this, "music video" idea, i changed to a new one which i will post the details of at some point. Mean time, this is some more sketches from my music idea.

SnowBoarder

Gone through making the idea of an action animation atm(at-the-moment). Been looking at a lot of snowboarding movies on youtube to get ideas. i sketched this quickly on my lunch break at work. its not amazing, but its an idea. :)

For this i would have to use a lot of squash and stretch in the movements. For instance, before a jump i would want the figure to go low down for speed, then after the jump i would need him to move from this small shape to a larger one. I will also use a Slow In and Out as i would want to slow down the action, like a 360 in the air. These are done at very high speeds so for the audiance to take it in, it works better if they work fast into the 360, slow during, and a fast land.
When planning out this idea, i think it would be best to stage them. write down a list of actions (moves) i want teh figure to do, then time them out in my head first.

Snowboarding video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0LKyeGCMOg

Sketches

This is some of the sketches I have been doing. I am not sure what I want from the story yet, but these are some of the random things i have been doing to think of ideas.
The basic idea for the story was some sort of chase resulting in a jump off a cliff/plane.

I wanted to show certain things in this jump that would show off my ability to show movement in clothes and how the body and clothing would react differently under the conditions. This would have to be done in a pose-to-pose action style as to be realistic it will have to be unpridictable and this would be hard to think about and plan a storyboard for. I was also hoping to create depth of field, either by making certain things smaller so they apear distant, or work out a method of blurring so that they are too close or too far away. This could also be a good idea for movement.


below are some links i have looked at while thinkin about this jump. Be warned they take a while to load, and the music is bad, so mute it if you can.
Sky Diver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ciOr6l1ss&feature=related

Flying man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxo7IznQnk

First post.

hey all,
welcome to my blog page thing. I will be uploading some animation/ sketches that i will do, so take note. :)