Pineapple Head Design 2

 These are some colour designs for the Pineapple head who the protagonist will talk to. I am quite happy with the colours of the Pineapple and i toyed with changing the skin colour to a more ridiculous hue, but i don't want to make the pineapple heads look alien because that could impede the message somewhat, i just want them to appear a bit weird.

 As you can see I tried two different sorts of clothing choice. One is a bit inspired by the film the Island with Ewan McGregor and the other is actually a tad inspired by a picture of my girlfriends brother wearing one of their mums coats.

 This one is a bit odd and just came out when i was switching between the two after they were both done. I felt it had an interesting look to it and could be potential clothing for the main pineapple head.

This is just a little sketch i did of the pineapple head in a similar style to the sketchy version i did of the main character Jason.

Protagonist Design 2

These first two pictures i experimented with shading a bit. As you can see in the first one i focused more on the light illuminating parts of the picture, whereas in the second i focused more on the shadows on him. I do like some of the bits of the first one such as the hair and collar but the second one i prefer overall. Though i feel maybe trying to make the shadow a tad lighter and also do some on the hair as well.

For these two I changed his shirt colour to see which one would work best. While the white works better for a fancy shirt the sort of shirt i am going for is more the sort of shirt either you could wear normally or you would wear if you were working for somewhere like BnQ. In my eyes the green shirt seems more like something you could wear casually, whereas the original light blue is more work shirt style. I don't know which one i prefer though.

 For these two i did a bit of experimentation with the skin colour of Jason. The first was a more yellow tint to his skin, and the second i just sucked all colour out. I don't think the absence of colour works looking at it, the fact that it matched his eyes puts me off a tad. While i do like the yellow and also looking at it makes me question if the normal skin colour i have done is too dark, i feel that trying to give Jason a normal skin colour will make him more normal looking to suit the character. Though a slightly yellowy hue could be used for the pineapple heads, though that could clash with their pineapples.

This is an alternate style for Jason i drew, What gave me the idea for it was when i was colouring in the normal Jason's hair and used a scribbley style for his fringe. I opened a new photoshop file to try and do his hair all in that scribbley style and ended up coming out with this version of him. It has kind of charmed me actually, this style being the final way I do the piece isn't out of the question.

Title ideas

The idea i have for the title at the moment is "Jason and the Pineapple heads" This would mean that Jason is the name of the main character. I like the idea that the name would stick in peoples heads due to the way it sounds similar to Jason and the Argonauts, i wouldn't want people to expect something similar to Jason and the Argonauts from my piece but hopefully the fact that its pineapple heads will tip people off to the fact it is a light hearted piece and not really connected to that other than a similarity in the names.

Protagonist Design Ideas

The first thing i wanted to design was the face of the protagonist, I felt the body would be rather similar to the pineapple man design but the face needed to show what i wanted to express with the character.

I felt the short hair would work to be the most normal style of hair making him look like a person who is quite normal. Him being reasonably normal in his usual life is important to maybe at the end give him a bit of reflection on what he thinks is normal. Maybe the pineapple head could question what he thinks is normal as he did to the pineapple head, that could be good.

I tried a few styles here, on a bit more rounded cartooney, another a little more anime/Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker inspired with a stronger jaw and the third is a bit of a combination having big cartooney eyes but a bit more of a normal proportioned face.

I'm still mulling over which design I prefer. I also have to think of what clothes i feel will work best for the character. I have to keep in mind the idea of simplicity when designing the clothes, I'm thinking maybe a collard shirt maybe giving him a going to a day job feel, a little Shaun of the Dead style.

I sketched up versions of them in a work shirt, i realise the second designs left arm could be a little longer but i can just deal with that if i draw him again. I think the work shirt could work well, it looks a little bit polo'y in picture 2 but for the more rounded style of the character look i think it works. While i like the shirt in the first picture i feel the long sleeves don't work where the character is concerned and also it is a bit too ruffled and crumpled looking to fit in with the more cartooney style i think.

I am still not sure which design i prefer, they both have their ups and downs. I feel design two looks a little more cynical whereas number one has more of a blank confusion look to him. there are points about both that i like but i think my personal choice is design two.

Rhyming Style

I was having a look to see what sort of poem structure Dr Seuss used for his poems as i very much like the rhythmical rhyming lyrics that make his work so characterful and wish to use that for my film.

Looking into it I found Dr Seuss used the anapaest style. This style sounds like this, well at least when it is using Tetrameter.

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

As you can see it has a nice rolling style to it, and i feel that will suit my production well. Hopefully I can write something really interesting using this style. It will be a challenge writing in such a way as i have never done any official poetry, and have only rhymed on a casual basis. I also wonder how well this sort of rhyming will work for a back and forth conversation as there will be between my main character and the main pineapple hat wearer with whom he speaks.

Making my Character

http://www.creativebloq.com/character-design/tips-5132643 This is a link to a really good blog post about character design which i was looking at in research for making my protagonist character in my FMP.
The thing i really need to think about which i made a note of earlier and this post reinforces is pinning down who my target audience is, who am i trying to make relate to this character.

Looking at it, I would say the people i am probably aiming at is people of my age who also remember fondly Dr Suess's work, i want it to also appeal to an older audience as well though.

Granted the writing and general subject matter should appeal to a wideish audience. I'm not sure if i will have any swearing in it yet, it depends on how i write it, i think though if i do have anything that would be a swear it will probably end up being a fun swear substitute because i like those and that tends to be the way i write scripts usually. I also find they are a lot funnier than a real swear.

But anyway while the script will be open to a wider audience i have to try to make sure the protagonists character design is a fitting match for my target audience, making it as easy as possible for them to see themselves in his position as to soak up and internalise the message i am trying to get across.

I also have to focus on what aspects of the character I am going to exaggerate and how much i will do so. As the blog post says it will be the part of the character i will focus on most so i am going to have to think of what will be the most focused on part. The eyes could potentially be a part i will be focusing on as i would imagine he will be looking around a lot to see all the weird stuff that is going on and i imagine they will also be reasonably expressive, so that could be a good starting point.

As the post said though keeping it simple is important and i agree with that on multiple levels. First i don't want it to be too complicated for animation purposes but also simplicity is very often what makes a character so strong, they only focus on the main aspects of the character really making it clear who they are and what there like via there design alone meaning having too much clutter on them could bog down that straight forward display of character you can get by visuals.

This is a good display of some strong and simple character design. Each one of these characters you can tell who they are and make a pretty good estimation of what there personalities are like just by looking at them, and they also keep it simple.

Look at the first character Johnny Bravo. His big styled hair, shades, large upper body and rolled up sleeves make his character rather easy to gauge and combined with his pose make it obvious what he would be like if you met him.

Then lets take a good opposite in number two, Dexter. Looking at him, his thick spectacles, rather dorky looking ginger hair, gloves and science coat and his head being almost the size of his body shows he is most definitely a scientist. But then take into account his stance and his facial expression and he seems much more confident and scheming.

Keeping in mind the importance of simplicity and the need to be able to read what a character is by a glance will be important when I am designing the protagonist for my FMP, who i still need to make a name for let alone a visual design. I however do know how the character will act, mainly because he will be acting similar to how I do in a rather blackadder style of sarcasticness I'm thinking.

Inspiration Research

I really like this short animated film. I feel the musical style and comedy at the beginning work very well, i feel like having something like that in my FMP could be a good idea. Some sort of constant musical track going over the top and tying everything together so it almost seems like a big spoken word poem/song. Definitely something to think about. Also unrelated to my FMP the fight scene around the end is extraordinarily cool, very impressive how they made an engaging fight sequence without really showing anything.

This film has a nice rhyming narration similar to how i would like to do it. While in this film that characters don't speak in my FMP i would like them to speak but i think i will have it so all the voices are done by the narrator but obviously he does voices for them so its quite story book style almost. Also i liked the sketchy art style they had in the beginning and was actually a tad disappointed when it went to full 3D. Also on a personnel note, this films moral lesson seems to be never let your guard down and let someone in emotionally or they will hurt you... I don't think i really agree with that but still i liked the animation despite the message seeming a bit odd to me.

This animation is done on much more of a flat plane, cut out style similar to the animated exeter ident i was the editor for. It also has a score as aposed to any narration or dialogue from the characters aided by the character expressions and movements to show what the emotion of the scene is. Seeing this has made me definitely sure the cutout approach is not what i want to go with for my FMP. Not because it looks bad or anything of that sort, just because while it fits this piece rather well i feel it wouldn't quite gel with what i want to do. I was quite impressed with the amount of expression they got out of side on silhouettes and i have to always remember to keep in mind strong emotional poses.

I really like the way in this film they really show how sometimes the simplest things are the most effective. All this person needed was five characters and a box on a big balanced platform to make an engaging and rather dramatic story. Also i feel this piece really does a good job with the poses to get the right emotion witch characters with very little to tell one from the other. This doesn't really have a lot to do with my FMP idea but it has so charmed me i really felt i should put it in. I will keep this simple ideas are sometimes the best idea in mind when coming up with the finer points of what will happen story wise in my FMP.

Looking into the source of 'Normal'

I have been looking into the message I am going to purvey with my FMP trying to find other films or animations that have been based on the same message and also general articles and such about questioning what is normal and questioning what normal actually is in general.

I haven't found any films as of yet which deal with that subject matter but i have found some interesting articles to do with it, mostly on psychology sites and places of that ilk.

Quite a few of the articles are to do with mental health, and while they are interesting they don't quite cover what i am going for. They were more exploring mental conditions, whereas what i am looking for is more the communal, society norms that we just accept despite them not being natural and sometimes not making a whole lot of sense. This article was a really good one, it addressed exactly what i am trying to confront, explaining about how the idea of normal comes about. Granted it doesn't challenge normal or have any particular message urging you to sit back and consider what your normal is and why it is, but it still does address very interesting points about our social normal and how we end up making those connections.

Pineapple Heads Design

These are two potential looks for the people with pineapples on there heads in my FMP. The first one looks more solid, his proportions are more accurate while still being stylised. While the second is a more curvy more cartoony style version.

I will expand on there design more experimenting with colours and different styles of pose. The second one at the moment feels more alive to me though that is probably due to the fact i drew it in a pose as apposed to the first one who is drawn straight facing you.

The Style

The art style of the animation I am not too sure about as of right now. I like the Adventure Time style, which wile simplistic i think is effective and something in that vein could suit the style of narrative i wish to convey.

I also like the style of an old cartoon i used to watch as a child called Courage the Cowardly Dog. Its style has a slight asymmetrical ness to it that i quite like.

Introduction to Research and Development... sort of

For this particular module the aim is to develop a project proposal which we will carry on into our third year. I want to over the course of this module, pin down an animation style and look my piece will have when i come to produce it in the third year. I will also be looking into research sources for the narrative elements.
In the end I hope to have a much better idea of what my piece will look like stylistically and how i will be going about animating it.

Tim Burton Poems

http://homepage.eircom.net/~sebulbac/burton/home.html This is a book of short poems by Tim Burton that my girlfriend showed me. There style is quite interesting, very random and strange like Dr Suess but usually much more dark subject matter.
In his poems it is much more narrator lead whereas at least the ones i have seen of Dr Suess they are much more character dialogue lead. I will probably go for a more dialogue lead approach but it is a good idea to think of how it could work with a much more narrator lead style, definitely something to contemplate.

Potential FMP style

https://vimeo.com/93372708 This is the link to an animation test i did. After we had that guest speaker from Aardman, whom we did a two day stop-motion workshop with. Which you can see what we made here https://vimeo.com/93374234 I was toying with ideas of stop motion for the final major project. While i had not done it at all before then (except for one time in my secondary school with lego) i enjoyed the process much more than i thought i would.
While i am rather inexperienced with that style of animating i still think it could potentially be a viable way of doing the project, i could see the strange situation i had in mind fitting well with that style.

Ideas for the project from the Sneeches and the Zacks

This is the Dr Suess piece that really inspired my final major project idea. This animation has long been a favourite of mine and its specific message is one that throughout my life i have believed in strongly. The particular message of the Sneeches on the Beaches is quite related to the one i plan to convey with my piece.

In this other Dr Suess animation, I enjoyed the way it was being told very much as a story, with the narrator also doing the voices for the characters. I found it interesting that despite the fact that you can clearly tell the character voices are done by the narrator, it really doesn't pull you out of the story. The simple addition of the movement of the characters mouths and the fact that they are clearly the ones talking makes it pretty much not matter that the narrator is doing the voices. I feel this is something i could use in my piece as i would like to conjure up a bit of a storybook feel similar to these Dr Suess animations.

Dissertation Topic Ideas

When being told about our dissitation i had an idea on what i could potentially do, I noted it down and this is what i wrote.
"Building Blocks: The Fantasy Shared Universe (Writing on the shared sources so many fantasy authors/filmmakers use and how Tolkien was not really the father of modern fantasy but was instead more a particularly famous child of the same sources as everyone else) eg. wild hunt (Dresden Files, Witcher) Ceiley and uncealy courts (Magic Knot Series, Dresden Files) (Supernatural, Lord of the Rings) Thalmetergy (Patrick Rothfuss books, Dresden Files)"
I discussed with my mum about this potential idea and the conversation drifted to celtic mythology and its prevalence in so many fantasy ideas and despite that its complete disregard in the modern eye. We realised the reason why no one acknowledged the mythology being used as Celtic. Because of Tolkien. He heavily drew from Celtic myth and due to that whenever anyone draws from Celtic stuff everyone assumes they are simply copying Tolkien's ideas.
So I thought about that idea for a bit but then some discussion of a recent fantasy series that caught my fancy The Witcher (which is Polish in origin) my mum mused on how original some of the ideas in it were. We discussed how it could be a cultural thing and how it was odd that sort of thing wasn't covered more. My mum pitched the idea of doing a dissertation on the more unknown myths throughout the world and compiling them and maybe discussing why they are more ignored by the main western media than other more prevalent mythos such as Egyptian, Greek and Norse.

The buds of an idea

I thought for a while to figure out which of the multiple ideas i had i should carry on with. Lots of them had their good points and each one had a reason i would personally want to make it, but i needed a piece that would work well in a short film whereas some were probably more suited to longer films or different mediums all together. I also had to make sure the piece would be full and self contained, one of my ideas was simply a scene from a short story i wrote so while i personally liked it and would like to animate that work at some point, i felt that being just a scene from a whole story would mean it left things potentially feeling unresolved and also being just one scene from the piece would mean the characters would not be introduced in said scene.
I was also thinking i should make something that would have... I'm not sure how you say. Well something that would work in an animation festival if you know what i mean, something that has the right feel.
So i have focused on the doctor Suess idea i had but have changed it a tad. The idea for the name i had for it changed but the concept i originally had in mind is still intact. The current version i had in mind involves a man (The protagonist) leaving his house or wherever he happens to be to find that everyone has pineapples on their heads and are doing a series of odd things, only to find that these things were supposedly normal despite the fact that he saw them for the ridiculous crazy things they are. The aim of the film is to try and make people question the things they consider normal.

Tree of Life idea research

This first tree is what i was really thinking of style wise and shape of tree and that sort of thing when i first thought to the tree of life idea. Then seeing scenes from history and stuff of that sort being played out in its branches. either via the branches shaping and modelling to show them or maybe the things actually happening in the branches themselves as if what was going on was tiny and in the tree.

Though looking through i found these two images which are a bit of a different style, the first being like a stain glass window the other more like a painting and the got me thinking of what drawing style will the tree be. Granted at initial conception the style was very much that of the first picture but other styles could be good. Though i am not super confident in my drawing ability really and if something ends up being stylised from what I've drawn it can sometimes be an accident as apposed to by design.

Carved out picture's book

Good idea for the book trailer. Which appears as carved out parts of a book to be still scenes that we can pan over and do slight animation for. I was thinking we could carve the scene out of pieces of paper and attach them like a book together then let them fall down a little flip book style until it builds the scene then stop pan and a bit of animation stuff like that, then another group of pages flip down doing the next scene all with the voice over ringing out above. At the end the cover would flap down and be the portal arcane cover.

Also another idea, we could carve out a part of a book and use it as a stage for animation.

Research and Development: Initial Ideas

My first idea for my third year project is taking a scene from a short fantasy novelette i wrote called The Reluctant Hero. I would probably want to do this in 2D animation i think. While this would be fun for me and hopefully for others it could potentially be a bit bad as it would not be a complete story and would only be a scene from an overarching plot, so could potentially not make for a perfect final major project.

I have another idea which involves the Tree of Life. It would be a visual animation where the narrative would be a suggested more abstract thing, much more of a spectacle style as apposed to hero's journey style. The animation would involve a tree (the Tree of Life) sprouting and then over its growth showing different bits of history starting with things to do with dinosaurs then early man then so on and so forth until the tree withers (could use the fact that the tree looks a bit like a mushroom cloud as a thing) then after it withers and dies the animation would end with a sapling sprouting.

This next idea actually came to me as a potential for a computer game. In my idea as a game it would be an RPG where the player character would be a person who loves the mexican wrestling Luchador. They end up via a series of events being transported to a Lucha world (partially inspired by an old animation i used to watch as a child) The player character while being a normal person there love of Luchador, there fighting spirit and a fun cast of characters would help them rise to the top and maybe even topple some sort of dark lord of Luchador. The game would be a funny game with a distinctive cartoon'y art style. I realised this idea could also be adapted into an animation of sorts maybe being a trailer style thing for that concept or maybe almost an intro to it as if it were a show, either way it would be 2D and probably be an exaggerated cartoon'y art style as i had imagined the game.

The next idea on my mind is a spin off of a show idea me and another student had developed. This animation would also be 2D and has a distinctive cartoon'y style and the actual animation itself would take place in the multiverse that is policed by the DPD (Dimensional Police Department) the story would take place separate from the actual show idea (which centers around the DPD) but could include them and maybe include other characters we have fleshed out. Maybe even a prequel short of the character relationships before the time frame of the show.

This idea is much more of a concept that i have yet to develop or know if i wish to develop it. In fact it simply came from me thinking the phrase time flies. That then got me thinking that the phrase time flies would be a great name for a short or show about a pair of time traveling flies.

This idea is one i cooked up a few years ago that i have been itching to use for something, my idea for it could be a bit too big to do in a short animation though. The idea is of multiple cliche protagonists from popular genre movies all converging in a diner. (characters such as grizzled ex cop turned private detective, comically inept loverboy, alien abductee escaping from the aliens and now questioning everything they once knew, sports person who is rising up to try and defeat their rivel in a series of montage fueled training sessions, etc) then half way through all their "separate films" something shocking happens, maybe a robber bursts in and holds them all at gun point, maybe there is some sort of world ending cataclysm and all their stories are interrupted.

This idea came from something i like to do, and it is titled I Looked up in the sky: A brief trek outside a box. It would be a more visual piece though could really go any way. It would be a story of someone going around in town doing unusual things and noticing that no one pays any attention, and tries to question what is normal and what normal even means. I see it animated in a slightly Doctor Suess esq style.

Here is an idea that was actually inspired by another short 3D animation. The idea is of someone in some really seemingly interesting job who has lost all pleasure in it and it would probably be a brief story of them refinding their interest in their job. It would be called Just a day Job and the job they would be doing would be either some sort of space ship pilot or super hero or something that most people would consider a very exiting job.

Another idea i have is one that i have already written a script for and initially came to me in a burst of random animation thought seemingly. It is a simple animation with a fatherly kids show esq voice over about a ball who wants to fly. It seems rather innocent and nice but a strange crow ends up interrupting the normal flow of the story via attacking and driving away all the supporting characters and eventually attacking (and seemingly murdering) the voice over. the characters would be 2D but i think all the backgrounds would be modeled in 3D, similar to the Amazing Adventures of Gumball (i think that's what its called) on cartoon network.

Also when reading through old mythology with my girlfreind (she has a lot of old mythology books) i came across a few odd stories that i thought would suit for a short animation, that however needs further exploration as of yet.

Animated book trailer Cutout look

http://vimeo.com/47697013

Storyboarding for Film

This is the storyboard work i did for a third year film student. I was suggested by Bec to the film students i worked with.