Assignment 1 Submission 1

Today we were given the brief for Assignment 2 which is a performance study.
We will have to direct and record a 2-5 second piece of dialogue and animate it in a scene using the provide models from the tutors. the objective is to show our understanding of the characters personality without the use of their design to describe who they are and how they act.

Later I began to write up my first submission for Assignment 1, which were the three loglines and a blurb for the one idea we have chosen to develop further.
During this time i also got to hear how my peers story's have been developing and i am impressed and inspired at the variety of great ideas they have developed. I found that some stories that were too grounded got dialed up in outlandishness and those stories that were too outlandish got toned down to be more grounded, both managing to find a balance to conform to the duration provided in the brief.

I started to think about inspiration for the mother character by picking pieces from popular media. i thought about the shapes they used and proportions which reflect real human anatomy.

Refining designs

For the first half of today i continued redisigning the mother character trying too use stiffer shapes and get a nice contrast with the child i decided to call Tubbs for the tine being. i also played a little bit with scale and considered varying the size of her hips. After getting some feed back from some of my classmates i decided that wider hips appear more motherly and add appeal by contrasting with her stiff and slender upper body.

Next i tried to draw the both versions of the ending sequence in which the mother would have to go and save Tubbs. The first scene is the darker tones ending where Tubbs is cornered by a group of older kids represented by shadows in the drawing. I tried to capture Tubbs' fear through his expression and pose. I think the feel of the scene could be pushed further by having an exaggerated high angle shot looking down on Tubbs.

 The next possible ending [reads right and down to left] starts with Tubbs going to heroically rescue a cat from jungle gym, but he gets too tired half way to the cat and ends up slipping to his doom. I thought that this scene could show he has a bigger heart than he does muscle and could be quite cute. It was suggested that it would suit the situation better to save the cat from a tree as to monkey bars which makes a lot more sense. If I was set on the monkey bars it could work if i had his object of  desire change from a cat to something else, like a friends shoe or something similar.

During the second half of the day i began to ctart a mood board for the design of Tubbs and his mum and gather some artwork that i give the sort of feeling i would like to try replicate in this story.

In the first page i explored russell from up as well as some real photos of kids in super hero outfits. I also added other characters that had shapes and proportions i would like to incorporate into Tubbs design.

Next i researched characters that had shapes and designs that gave a good feel for the mother who i imagine looks kind of stern but also kind of blank in expression, so that she sort of gives a sense that she doesn't agree with her son dressing up but she loves him anyway.

I like the summery feeling of these images and think that they give off a kind of youthful and fun feeling. The colors are really nice and i like the characters kind of blank expressions of the kids in peanuts, i feel it matches the vibe of my story, kind of a child's perspective of the world.

Character Concepts

Today we had a master-class covering creating character concepts. Frans covered shape language, and how they help describe the personality of the character and how the relation between shapes can also translate to the relationships between characters.

I found the example of how the rose has sharp aspects that make it appear elegant but also dangerous at the same time, to be really interesting and how the combinations of different shapes in the same concept can result in some really interesting ideas that can mean so much just through shape language. it was also stressed that a strong silhouette is quite paramount and is a great starting point for creating thumbnails and concepts.

After another revision over the ideas i had yesterday i found that nearly all of my story's had no climactic moment.

After a consultation with Frans, he suggested that in the story with the Paste Eater attempting to escape the asylum, he could be an outcast super person who was shunned for having a lame ability, however during some disastrous event [like a tower falling over] in which no other person can save the town, the paste eater uses his adhesive spit to save the day and in turn gain the acceptance of the town.

We also discussed that in the little Hockey player story, maybe he could start of as a water boy or mascot who is chosen as a last resort to play and some how manages to win the game by scoring the winning goal or stopping a shot with his face or something. an alternate route would be that he is looked down on as a mascot but his determination to become the greatest mascot ever aids in the teams victory by significantly boosting the morale of the team during games resulting in their success gaining their acceptance, which could possibly culminate in a fierce one on one brawl with a rival mascot at a game.

With these changes i would be able to retain my theme of underdogs, while inserting an interesting climactic moment to complete these stories.

In the Kid Superhero story, Oana suggested that the climactic moment where the boy gets into a pickle that he cannot overcome could be light hearted to carry on the cutesy charm of the story. example were possibly getting stuck in a swing set or jungle gym in which his mother could come and rescue him.

As i continued to think of other possible climactic moments i considered possibly having the tone get really dark and have the kid be harassed and bullied by older kids at which point i think the art style could change to give a disturbingly gritty feeling that would make you feel a strong sense of concern for the kid's safety. i think this juxtapose could have quite a strong impact on the audience by catching them off guard. At the end of the story the mother could come to his rescue by maybe by intimidating the bullies by scary glare, getting out her belt, or raising her jandal or something.

The mother character would have a disappointed look on her face [like roz from monters inc] for most of the film even when the kid hugs her for saving him. i imagine the ending scene being where it shows the mother doing dishes with her usual face, then the kid is fighting imaginary bad guys in the background in a mother costume wearing an apron, rubber gloves and spatula/wooden spoon, causing the mother to crack a smile.

I started sketching ideas for the kid who thinks he's a super hero, basing him off round shapes to show his vulnerability and innocence. i withdrew heavily from Russell from "UP".

I attempted to use the same base shapes for the mother character. After revision from Oana we concluded that it would be a stronger design choice to have the two character have opposite shape language, the contrast creates more appeal.

Later i sketched a few ideas of moments in the story where he is trying to be heroic

i am going to continue to work on thw mother character as i have found making her pointier to the kids roundness difficult.

Pitch Brief

Today we received the brief for our pitch pack assessment.
The tutors were adamant that we aim high for this assessment, and stressed the amount of work that it would take to achieve a high grade.

We received a master-class lecture on brainstorming where we were shown 2 interesting examples of how to come up with some ideas for a short film as well as some basics of a 3 act structured story with beginning middle and end.

 

i found the method of word association to cater to my thinking however i haven't delved too deep into the first method of mashing two different themes to come up with unique stories, which i may explore in my own time.

i started with visual designs then went to see what other thoughts i could come up with from there. i started to think of themes or ideas i found interesting and see which ideas i felt correlate, are common or i just feel the strongest about.

i discovered i like the themes of defying expectations, oddities, sacrifice, grounded or gritty settings.

1.One of the stories i had had would be a prequel for i personal project i had been working on, where "a female grim reaper about the size of a 6 year old, would have her first traumatic experience of escorting a lost soul to the after life."

I liked the idea of disassociating the norm by re imagining it in a different way. here i took the brooding theme of death and thought it would be interesting to attempt to present it as an innocent idea.

i discovered as interesting i found this idea it wasn't greatly original however i am still partially attached because i enjoyed designing how the grim reaper would look as a young girl.

2. "A convict is released back into society to have an office job, only to discover how terrible it is leaving them to conclude they were happier in jail, resulting in them surrendering themselves to the police after leaving the office in a chaotic state"

Frans gave us the advice that we could also mashup characters and worlds instead of just stories in general. For some reason i thought of one of Harley Quinn from batman trying to act as a normal citizen in a happy office setting to contrast the universe she is typically accustomed to. i think that the fish out of water theme and shenanigans could be entertaining because of the juxtapose.

3. "A child who is sent to an asylum for gaining adhesive spit from eating too much paste attempts to escape incarceration with his new abilities"

Adhesive Adam is a character i created in first year that i always thought had decent potential, and i think his unique abilities with his feral characteristics in his charmingly cute body had potential for entertaining adventures. i like the combination of dangerous and cute with foul and gross habits of well a real child. i think the idea is kept grounded and relatable but still outlandish enough to be interesting.

4."Small Hockey player is bullied and beaten during a game but earns other players respect after he persists to stay down." 

As i began to run out of ideas i drew from personal experience. Physically, i am small in stature but i like to take part in sports. the two sports i like most are basketball and hockey which both rely heavily on size and build. Because of my size i had often been seen as a liability as to an asset, but i always valued the ability to work as a unit to be more valuable than the ability to work as an individual. So i thought instead of a David and Goliath story it could be Goliath vs David and his buddies story. i began designs for this idea as well, however if i take away my personal attachment to the story it doesn't hold up very strong and isn't very interesting, as the same ideas could be presented by interchanging elements so easily that i can't honestly say that this is the strongest way to deliver this point across.

5."A child who is obsessed with super heroes sets out to save the neighbourhood, but upon encountering an unbeatable foe, their mother swoops in and saves them."

I like super heroes and the idea of innocence, and i thought how as a child i thought ninja turtles and spider-man were the coolest and i idolised them a lot. As i grew older and found out how to do things for myself more i grew to appreciate how much my parents did for me, and i kind of concluded that they are the real super heroes. I feel this is a strong idea as it can hit home with many people being such a grounded theme.

I enjoyed learning new methods of forming ideas and seeing what my peers have chosen to develop and how we were able to all aid each other in nurturing and improving our ideas. i would like to develop more confidence in sharing my ideas as i felt i was hesitant in some instances. i would also like to traverse weirder/stranger avenues to discover more unique and entertaining ideas.