We met on Tuesday for our study group meeting and although we are all doing films for our final projects all four topics for our extended essays were very different. We decided to go through what each person wanted to write about, helping each other try and narrow it down or come up with things to look into. We then split up and started to try and find article for each other. This was extremely helpful as we could help each other and although we are not looking at similar topics we could still say ideas for each other.
These were the article I found for other people and myself and then the article they found for my subject.
Raj – Evolution of
family friendly animation
Bethany – sound
Nathan – noir or genre (horror or dark)
me – documentary animation and mental health
I still need to go through and read the link I got so I can try and narrow down my question, which I will hopefully have for next week.
Final Film Progress -
Ethics -
It was brought to my attention this week that I needed to think about ethics because of the topic I am dealing with. Although this had somewhat come across my mind in that I wanted to make sure my mum was okay and that everything was up to her, I hadn't thought about this as if she wasn't my mum. What would I have done if I had recorded another person about depression and what I would need to put in place and consider before doing this? My animation is being brought up in the next ethics meeting at the University and they will say whether or not everything is fine with what I have done, but until then I am going to write a ethics report making sure I understand what I should of done if it wasn't my mother.
Animation -
This week I wanted to try and get a better idea at what I wanted to create. Up until this point I had, had a basic idea of how I wanted it to be but because I hadn't had the voice over I didn't quite know what would happen. I had also researched a lot so that now that I have my voice over I have a better understanding of what I like and what I want the animation to do and look.
I started by going through the sound clips I had rerecorded from last week. I have narrowed it down to around a 75 second voice over. I felt this gave me the most inspiration when I imagined what I could do with it.
This is the clip below:
The clip of voice over I am using from Summer Davies-Newton on Vimeo.
As I listened to this section I could imagine a net type creature luring the main character, my mum, in and then grabbing her foot and pulling her down into the darkness. As she was being pulled down she would struggle and not be able to brake free. The monster would wrap all around her and then she would go limp. It would then go to her mind where everything would be dark and creepy and then lights would start to appear with different people in them shouting for her. The lights would continue until she wakes up, the lights take over the screen and she is able to swim free.
Refining the idea: scripting it better:
Me and Bethany went through both of our ideas trying to see what camera angles we would use and refining our ideas better.
The voice over is 1:11 minutes long, which give me plenty of time to play with timing.
- It starts off with the female character floating into the water with sunbeams streaming through the water
- she reaches out towards the light
- you then see her dragged off screen
- bubbles float up (all above up to 16 secs)
- follows face from above being dragged down - almost drowning
- her trying to escaped and but just being dragged down. (until 30secs)
- net creature engulfs her and she is trying to fight it off and swim away
- she ends up going lifeless(30-49 secs)
- goes black (49-50)
- cuts to her face being - closed eyes
- the light streams on again
- her eyes open quickly (until 55 secs)
- starts to swim up taking the net with her
- detaching from it as she is swimming
- end with her being pulled back off screen
- bubbles (until 71 secs)
Reference:
I started to look at different references for my animation. Particularly water and how people move in water and what it looks like to scream under water.
I need to do more research on the above as this is only picture I would prefer to have filmed references if possible, but it gives me a good idea for my initial sketch storyboards.
I also found the below videos to look at both animated and filmed water scenes.
Initial storyboards - (really rough)
The above are my initial sketches the story. I did not finish them for the lesson but by next week they will be much better, with more detail.
Styles -
I really like the look of this animation and I want a similar look in the face and eyes, very simple but emotional.
Lois Van Baarle - http://blog.loish.net/
The above link is to a blog by Lois and shows her work which is very fluid at times, which i envision for my animation. The picture below if one of her work and I like this sort of style mixed with the video above for my female character.
I also found the link below which are illustrations of mental illnesses and I liked the dark and sketchy style of them. Although I may not go this dark, I may use this to create my net creature.
I also liked this to see what other people see them as similarly liked the other link I posted on a previous blog post about another artist that does the same.
http://www.boredpanda.com/for-inktober-i-focused-on-mental-illness-and-disorders/?page_numb=1
I still need to look further into the style I want.
Colour -
Sam had asked us to bring in colour chips for this week. Bethany had brought a lot of different ones and so gave me some. As I was storyboarding I thought about what colours I might use. Since it was going to be in the ocean I knew I would need a lots of greens and blues, with maybe yellows for the sun beam. I need to research more into colours that you would find, but for now I have a rough idea of the colours I would like.
Below is what my space looks like and the colours I am thinking of using.
