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.