Group Project - New Idea Development

Peter McVerry Trust Idea

The new animation I had in mind for the Group animation would be a text-based animation, with imagery and maybe characters to go alongside it. The animation would be done in a cut-out style, where I hope it would be bright, colourful and an overall positive looking piece. I want the pacing of the animation to quick, but not so fast that it can't be understood, so I feel I may need to ignore some of the dialogue to focus on the more important aspects the original video.

Story Outline;

The animation opens with an arrow zigzagging it's way up to the top of the screen, as the works 'Safe Pass' appear on the trail it leaves behind. The arrow continues up and makes a sharp turn right as a set of workman's clothing drops onto it, seemingly amazed by it's own ability to move. Behind it, like a neon billboard, the words 'Work Clothes' flashes. The jumpsuit moves right, along the trail, where the arrow has dropped suddenly. The jumpsuit jumps off the edge, and as it disappears below the screen, books, pencils and other educational material bursts up like water splashed up onto the screen as he talks about getting into college. The camera jumps down to follow the jumpsuit, it has become like normal clothing stuck in the wind as it falls. In the background, various explosions and clustered shapes mimic the sense of chaos as the screen grows darker. The jumpsuit falls below the screen, just as several hands rise up with a burst of light, weaving around the screen. The jumpsuit is perched on the last hand to rise, looking confident as the scene ends.

Reference Material

https://vimeo.com/76827185

https://vimeo.com/42059246

https://vimeo.com/133356390

https://vimeo.com/67189243

B.A Animation - Thesis Topic

Thesis Topic

Narrative Style in Animation; Looking at The Hero's Journey

What I wish to research;

1. The Hero's Journey is a narrative pattern that appears in many forms of entertainment media; games, film, animation, etc. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as the Hero, an individual who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of themselves, or someone else.

2. Stages of Character Development; the Hero's Journey;

• Living fully in Identity
• Glimpsing, Longing or Destiny
• Moving towards Essence without leaving Identity
• Fully committed to Essence, but Growing Fear
• Living One's Truth, with everything to Lose.
• The journey is complete, destiny achieved

3. Character Arcs; The transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of the story, starting as one sort of character and gradually transforms into another in response to change or a key moment in the narrative,

4. Developing a character's story by creating a three-dimensional character

• A well-rounded character
• Three dimensions; Physical, Sociological and Psychological 

5. Character Archetypes in displayed in the Hero's Journey narrative, how these characteristics could be applied to my own characters and what problems come with it?

6. Comparing an example from modern animation with my own character from the animation short.

How this is related to my B.A Major Film;

My own animation short is one where I want to focus on character design and character animation. In creating characters, I find the process of developing intriguing characters an entertaining procedure, solving the problems that may arise during the process and the reward of a physically appealing character at the end is worth it. However, wanted to look at the narrative side of creating a character and from it, a story. The aspect of the narrative pattern of The Hero's Journey, is the path the character takes from his beginnings, going through trails and dangers at the centre of the story and reaching the end, where they gain and the glories or destiny they wanted from the start.  My own character, the zombie known as Creak, only has a minute and a half to get through his story, but I find that I can apply many of the stages of a Hero's Journey to his character arc, from his sudden impromptu desire to not want to die for real and the need to keep the child out of danger for his own safety.
 
Reference Material;

'Character Development and Storytelling for Games' by Lee Sheldon
'The Writer's Journey' by Christopher Vogler
'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell
'A Practical Guide to The Hero with Thousand Faces' by Christopher Volger

Visual Reference Material;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZQUebMSEg Pixar in a Box; Character Development 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvGcG4m9tgY Screenwriting; The Six Stages of Character Development - IFH Film School - The Hero's Journey

Wreak-It Ralph Produced by Walt Disney Animation Studio, directed by Rich Moore

Script Draft 4

‘BABY TROUBLES’ (WORKING TITLE)

DRAFT 4

FADE IN:

VFX. CAMERA PANS TOWARDS HOUSE.

EXT. FOREST, HOUSE ON A HILL - NIGHT

Camera pans over treeline to a rickety, two storey cabin perched on a shallow hill. The moon is high and a old car sits outside. The camera moves forward, towards upper window and passes through.

VFX/SFX. PAN THROUGH WINDOW, NIGHTTIME SOUNDS SHIFT TO LOW JAZZ MUSIC

CUT TO

:

Aerial shot of coffee table, a folder is placed on it that says ‘BABYSITTERS AT SCARILY CHEAP PRICES!’ in tacky writing. Passes on the bloodthirsty werewolf with high body count, the creepy religious vampire and the mad scientist that show him/her with various body parts, laughing madly. Stops on picture of zombie.

Profile shows CREAK, stands nervously while not looking at camera in ridiculous HAWAIIAN SHIRT. He has never eaten children and only wants a BIG, JUICY BRAIN as payment. Someone taps on the page and the sound of a phone being picked up.

CUT TO:

INT. HALLWAY - NIGHT

Opens to darkened hallway with cheap vibe, cracked photo frames and furniture that has been hastily repaired instead of replaced. On Mother as she opens the door. Creak stands outside. Creak reaches out slowly to shake her hand, however mother is in too much of a rush to notice. She simply pushes past him and out the door. Creak is left standing in HALL, still with his hand out. DOOR SLAMS SHUT behind him.

A BANG is heard upstairs, then shuffling across the floorboards before it stops. Creak startles at sudden noise, looks frantically about for source. He begins to PANIC and follows the sound, lumbered towards the stairs as fast as his legs can.

CUT TO:

SILHOUETTE of Creak fumbling up the stairs, falling once or twice.

CUT TO:

INT. TODDLER'S ROOM - NIGHT

Creak peeks into room, finds the crib empty. Creak begins to panic, looking frantically around the room for the baby. Finds the baby over among his toys, playing happily. Creak approaches with hunched back and waves awkwardly at child. Child simply stares at him as he gestures to the crib and motions a sleep hand gesture. The child blows bubbles at him and throws toy brick at him, knocking his eyes out.

By the time Creak puts eyes back in, baby is gone again and Creak freaks out. He finds the baby trying to climb up to the window, but quckly snatches him up. The baby begins to cry and and through a tanturm, knocking off Creak’s head as he flails his arms.

Head bounces off ground to other side of room. Creak is not happy, but hears the baby giggle at him and see the child is calmed down. His body picks him up and he talks to the child, convincing him to sleep. As Creak goes to put the child in the crib, the camera shows Creak’s face as a rip and tear sound is heard.

The scene fades in on the child hugging Creak’s severed arm and pans out to show Creak sitting in a chair beside him reading a newspaper.

Palettes - Major Film

Palettes

Backgrounds

Establishing Shot

Though I planned to have my animation take place at night, a majority of it would take place inside the house of the mother and child. The palettes I hope to use for my animation short are dark, muted tones that that blend together. In terms of background design, much of the environments will be based indoors, where I hope to use darker tones but softened to highlight the atmosphere of a cosy home, even in it's state of disarray. The backgrounds will have no define outline, more so they would comprise of colour and shade, becoming lighter the further the scene gets from the foreground.

There is only one outdoor scene shown in great detail; the establishing shot of the the delapidated house that has been cheaply repaired numourous times. The house sits on a hill, surrounded by trees, shrubs and mountains in the background. I wanted this opening scene to begin with that traditional dark and spooky vibe most scary films begin with, maybe adding some thunder and lightning to give the scene more feel. However, I want it to compose of greens and blues, with hints of purple to give it that outer-worldly effect due to the strangeness of the storyline.





          Interior Environment

The interior of the house will be brighter thanks to the artificial lighting of the lamps and lights within the house. The interior will be a showcase of a cluttered, messy home of a single mother, but should have the sense that this is a home, a place she and her child are perfectly comfortable in. There will be no dense shadows, nor will there be overly dark colours. I hope to be able to blend various shades of blue to highlight shadows with hints of warm colours centred around lighting.

Peter McVerry Talk

Peter McVerry Talk

On Tuesday 3rd of October, we welcomed a guest speaker from the Peter McVerry Trust. The speaker began by introducing the Trust the mission of the trust and its history that is spread over the last few decades. She highlighted the Trust’s aims and goals for the next few years and even had the strange business strategy to go out of business, something that would only be achievable by ending homelessness in Ireland. The speaker emphasized the goals of the Trust they hoped to achieve for the homeless in Ireland, some of which were building houses for the homeless or those in bad situations.

In terms of the animations, she spoke of need for the animations to represent the Trust’s message pf hope and highlighted several key aspects the animation should show;

- Positive; don’t focus on the negative
- Respect for the person
- Use of Imagery
- Stereotypes; challenge people’s perception of homelessness.

Original Story Idea and Why It May Not Work;

In the beginning, I found a short animated series online known as '1Minute Nature' that used digital animation on top of cut-out backgrounds and images of real environments that where scaled up compared to the characters. I wanted to try cut-out animation with a small blend of manipulation animation in the background of the short. The simple outline of the story was to have the character in a kitchen environment while real people in the back went about setting the table. The character would sit on a mug while in the background people would place cutlery on the table. The character would jump down and indicate that the mug was similar to the cell he slept in for a number of years while in hostels. As he would describe the house he now owns, the people in the background would place down everyday objects that would represent the areas he describes. The character would then move behind one of this objects and the scene would transition to a scale model of a sitting room or kitchen where he would sit and say he can final have a cup of tea in his own house.

I changed my initial idea due to the fact that when I looked at my idea in a bit more in-depth, I found that I felt I was making the character seem small compared to the individuals in the background and thusly making him appear less important and denying him a sense of respect for his story.

Now I am planning out an idea involving a text based animation with respective imagery for the scene. The short will mostly comprise of quick moving scenes and transition from one angle to another so that the animation is not just one straight line.

Peter McVerry Trust Story Idea - Group Project

Peter McVerry Trust Story Idea

Influenced by the animations from the ‘1Minute Nature’ Series, I thought it would be interesting to go with this style from the Group Project as it was something I had done little of in the past. The style of this animation would be that the character would be shrunk down in size and would interact with the enlarged environment around them. I often did digital animation so I wanted to stay away from it for this project. Instead of the characters being digitally animated, I wanted to try cut-out animation with the realistic environments. The goal for me was to think up of a story in which the character would need to interact with the surroundings for the message to get across. However, I found this difficult as the number of objects I could find where limited in the fact that they had little connection to the setting or events the character would speak about.

Plot

Taking into account the ambiance audio in the background of the clip, I tried to set the animation somewhere relevant. The animation opens up into a normal, real kitchen and the camera pans down to the table at the center. The character sits on a mug as people in the background place cutlery on the table. The character will jump down as the audio starts, indicating that the mug was the same size as the cell he stead in while in the hostel. As he describes the house he currently owns, the normal sized people place down everyday objects that would represent the areas he describes as he walks forward. The character moves through the objects as they are placed before the scene transitions to a model of a sitting room by the character taking behind an object and walks into the new scene. He sits down, saying he can finally have a cup of tea in his own house. The scene ends as the Trust logo appears.

The story will need work, but I think I will enjoy this project as it gives the class an opportunity to work as a group in a real client-esque setting. 

(Samples from '1Minute Nature' Series; Not the scale of the characters compared to the realistic 

objects in frame.)