First Post

Roiiighhht!

First post of my final unit and year at Ravensbourne College. It is still the summer holidays and I have awhile before term starts but since we have been given a small project by the tutors to have prepared for the beginning of term I am starting mine now.

Firstly - what we need to do.
Here is a copy of the email Jared sent to Kofi who forwarded it to the rest of us about our current situation;

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Hi Kofi, you will all be required to make an individual pitch.

Each and every one of you... Pitches will be voted for by staff and students, but the final decision for which films get green lit will rest with course staff.

There are three important considerations to bear in mind:

1) Your pitch will be assessed, a very good pitch isn't necessarily one that also gets green lit. When it comes to crewing up, staff will also have final say.

2) You will work on more than one film.

3) Final films are not assessed, students will create an individual portfolio of work that was done throughout the year on all of the films that they worked on. This portfolio is what is assessed.

This means that two students who have worked on the same film could receive differing grades.

Mike or Dan should be able to provide more clarification if you need it.

Jared

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I had planned on already being in a group with 4 of my friends but that doesn't seem as secure after reading this email so I'm doing this portion of the project alone (as I'm sure they will be as well).

I already did a bit of mind-mapping with Ryan and Karen on our project a couple of months ago and so that is my first step. Here is a scanned copy of the brainstorm I made while we were throwing about ideas;



The idea out of these that I want to pursue is the videogame one; where a child gets sucked into a videogame he is playing, befriends a strange creature and has a short adventure there.

However this doesn't seem very original so in the future posts I make I will narrow down and change this idea, maybe dramatically, to something that is less cliché and also something that isn't too complicated to make!
I also like this idea because I can see a very nice opportunity for a 2D/3D crossover and I would like to do some 2D work for this project so perhaps when the character enters the videogame everything except him and the creature could turn to 2D - the backgrounds, characters and other objects, opening up a slightly wider world to work with.


We also looked on youtube for animations that inspired us and would work well with the style we wanted for this project.


This one is particularly useful as it involves videogames!! I really love the character designs and interactions in this video, it is also very clever as you don't realise until the end exactly what the relationship between the two of them is. I want to give my own project such a twist and focus on the character interaction in a similar way.


Here is another great animation we found. If we want to animate kids, this is a good example of one that has done that already, the colours in the video are also very easy on the eyes and aesthetically pleasing and has reminded me how important it will be to think about colours in my own piece, not just on the background but the characters too - colours can have symbolic meanings and tell you things about the characters you might not realise at first. Red could mean danger, or passion, mainly in this case it just makes the other boy stand out against the main character, drawing our focus in as the box does to the blue boy.


This one helps highlight the relationship between an old and young character and has got me thinking that this could be a great subject to search into for originality in my own piece. Perhaps an old man could be playing a videogame teaching his young grand-son or grand-daughter?


Since we had only really looked at 3D animations thus far, I found a 2D one that really captured my interests that was made on flash! The way the artist manages to zoom around and change the camera angles in such a dynamic way has really inspired me. Hopefully I will be as masterful at flash as this one day but for now I can only do my best and hope it will turn out well.

And last but not least, here is the best example I found of 2D/3D animation that works beautifully together;

I adore everything about this video! The colours, the character, the seamless 2D and 3D transitions. This is ideally what I want to aim for, although obviously something simpler :)


So that was the first step in this project.

Before I return to Ravensbourne in just over a month's time there are a few more things I want to accomplish.

ONE!
On this project I want to have completed all the character designs, story ideas and animatic but I must remember where I went wrong in my previous projects and try not to rush these initial ideas too much as that has always been my downfall and I should give it a few days to think about before I rush straight in and start working.
Aside from that..

TWO!
I also want to create my own portfolio website showcasing my art, animations, life drawing etc. This is something I will no doubt need in the future. I already have an art site that I am a member on (http://lubrian.deviantart.com/), but this just showcases one side of my art, the side that loves manga!, and I don't really have a place for all the alternative art that I have drawn (which could probably equal the amount of manga I dish out).

THREE!
So there's that, and of course my dissertation! I have reached 2000 words so far and need to write another 6000 before I go back so I will post my progress in another entry soon.

Thanks for reading!