Animation Narratives (Assignment 3-Pre Production-Week 10)

In the beginning of week four, this is when we were asked to move ourselves into new groups for our final assignment in Animation Narratives. I was asked to join a group with Philip, Ellie, Morgan, Charlie and Thomas and was happy to be working with an energetic and imaginative bunch of people. When we first got the brief on our assignment and that it was going to be a short 15/30 animation around the theme of ‘Adventure’ and we were to use the rest of the class to brainstorm our ideas as a group onto a whiteboard, everyone was eager to begin. In the start of our discussion you could tell that everyone in the group was respectful of each other’s ideas and had so many thoughts and ideas to share and incorporate together.

We as a group had heard Philips idea of starting the characters adventure within his bedroom and to include tasks such as finding his clothes for the day ahead, getting changed and running down the stairs. We as a group then developed this for a while, suggesting ideas of where the character might be going, is he going to school, to the park or to an exciting event in his life. I suggested things like marking his calendar to provide anticipation for the adventure ahead and Ellie suggested maybe the character to be getting dressed up as his favourite superhero for a fancy-dress day in his school.

We were enjoying this idea and shared it with Sarah and Alec and were eager to get their feedback on our idea, they suggested to include more of a push towards the theme of adventure and Thomas suggested to incorporate a spooky theme and have the adventure of the kid in the dark of his room, that he is eager to escape from. I was a bit unsure of this idea as my last animation was similar in design and also called ‘Nightmare’ world, however the different people and ideas in this group for this animation, showed that the animation was going to be entirely a new concept and one I was eager to work on.

Once we had settled on this idea it was time to develop the idea into a more substantial plan and to further brainstorm a well-structured story, concept, ideas and references we may find that would help in expressing our animation. Our first plan was to settle upon a rough story board of how our character would go about his adventure and the story we wished to tell. We followed the sequence of the hero’s journey chart and wanted to keep the story simple, but descriptive of what his adventure begins like, follows through and how it ends.

We were not going to include much if any dialect within our adventure, so the story would have to be clear enough for the audience to get a good understanding of what the animations of our drawings were trying to narrate. We brainstormed around the character going to sleep, the dark playing tricks on his mind and I suggested the part with the window light shining monsters’ shadows and the character falling deeper and deeper into the fears of his own mind and room.

We also needed a climax of the story and a way for the character to return to his room and end the animation, a classic object of a child’s nightlight seemed like a good heroic end to shine away all the fears that the child imagined on his adventure.

The next topic of our first presentation, was some of the inspirations and references we had gathered as a group, that we thought would be best suited in helping us to create our animation. Everyone was eager to share the references of their favourite games, movies and animations that they thought would be best suited to the style of our own animation.

Spooky is my favourite theme, so I wasn’t short in sharing my inspirations, but it was also really interesting and fun to find out how many things as a group we all knew and enjoyed together and we also were able to show new things to one another and find new interests and joys within that. The first reference I remember Philip saying was the game ‘Limbo’, by Martin Anderson and how it was a monochromic colour platelet game and the character itself and surroundings were quite simple, but just as spooky and eye catching. This suggestion of a nightmare themed game then gave me the idea to suggest the game ‘Little Nightmares’, by Taesier Studios, which is a more colourful game, but with a darker hue of blue and purple. The game follows a small character, who’s face is shielded with an iconic yellow raincoat and follows his journey of escaping from enormous monsters, who appear all distorted and out to cause him harm.

This inspirational brainstorm was really enjoyable to share all of our ideas and from this I decided to create a Pinterest board and pin all the work of different artists that I thought would inspire my concept designs or references that would help support and inspire the work my team was going to create.

Some of the inspirations I suggested and that were discussed in our prestation was the ‘Sandman’, by Paul Berry and is a stop motion animation that was shown within our first Animation Narrative class. I thought this animation was really interesting and almost the same story of our own group animation, where the little kid finds himself within the dark of night, surrounded by his own fear and whatever he imagines within it. Other references included some monster concepts by various artists found on Pinterest that were creepy and held the same shape I imaged my own monsters to have and possessed the towering and haunting feel of what could be used to scare the character.

The colour and aesthetic of our animation was also going to be a component that was going to be heavenly influenced and inspired by the references we as a group had collectively brainstormed together. We agreed on a dark colour palette with a wide range of shades including purples, blues, pinks and greys and that keeping a similar colour palette throughout the animation would give the animation some harmony between shots.

A animation that I love the colour and aesthetic of is ‘Over The Garden Wall’, by Patrick McHale and how it is a quite dark animation to view, but the pops of colour such as orange and red work well with the show and almost provide a harvest and autumn sentiment throughout the entire series. It would be amazing that with the colour palette we use within our animation, we would be able to further narrate our story to the audience, providing an accurate representation of Halloween or mystery within our animation and allow the audience to feel a certain way when watching.

Environmental was the slide I was presenting to the class, as I was working on some concept ideas and brainstorming where this animation could be held. In the start we all gathered that the animation would be set within the kids bedroom and that around the room there would include various shots and on goings, such as monsters creeping over the bed frame, the outside light shining in and projecting monsters around the room and just how a tiny kids bedroom can hold so much character and fear. The environments of the kids’ room would need to be fully used in every aspect, to show just how erratic the imagination of a child can get and that shows the bedroom almost transforming into another dimension and how even the simplest things of a lamp or a pile of clothes on the floor. Transforms into a different reality and can look like its growing as a monster with just as many lumps and bumps as the clothes on the floor.

However, I think that maybe we felt keeping the animation within one environment, although it would be transformed and distorted. That we could push ourselves and have the kid almost be so scared he falls into another realm, a nightmare realm and has the added adventure of different surroundings and how he was going to escape from all of this. This extra environment could add the anticipation when the nightlight would appear as the final point of the traitorous environment and be so powerful and heroic that it was able to protect the child and show them to safety.

This was my second time presenting to the class and again I was just as terrified as last time, but I was happy to see some improvements on my presenting skills to my class and in how I was able to interact. I was able to develop these skills and make more eye contact with the class, directing my attention towards them and presenting my part to the class, rather than having my head down and reading notes off a page. I hope I was able to present what we as a group was going to do with the environment, how we were going to create this and how it would relate to the theme of adventure.

In the points of creating our animation such as the environment, design, colour and inspiration, the factor we were still actively correcting was little changes to our story and creating a storyboard. We wanted to show that we did not just appear with a design and story plan and that we had discussed and taken our time to trial and error our story’s and had created a great start, middle and end to our animation.

We also wanted to make sure that we kept and had shown a clear idea of the theme of ‘Adventure’ and that it was the main point we as a group circulated around to progress on and created an adventure-based story. We wanted to show this with a clear heroic moment that the character was striving for or had stumbled upon during his adventure and in this case hopefully the nightlight. This is why we created a number of storyboards amongst everyone and then worked together to produce our final version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Qm7r7QPlU

Our last slide was an animatic, so a quick representation of the completed animation and story our group is looking to create. This short animatic is a good way to give the lecturers a rough idea of what they will hopefully see us create and present as a group. This prestation also allows them to give us some critical feedback on anything they may suggest changing within the animation, before we get too far into the animation were changes would be more difficult to make. This animation with its shots and timing, will also be a great reference for the upcoming and more professional final animation, as we can look onto it for help and provide some reassurance on what timing and movements to include within our shots.

I’m excited to see what we create as a group and how our own personal inspirations and choices, will affect our decisions and creations in the weeks to come.