Whillock: October 2010

Here is the finished new animatic for the Student Financial Services Pig Project, awaiting feedback as we speak.

Ignore the strange looking player, it should play the clips though. This is a rough guide as to how I'd like to use the given clips. I've managed to use nearly all of them, and have a good story and narrative as to how it's going to look when it's done. For now I've only got the audio available though, but will begin working on the storyboards and more soon.

Basic gist of the story is, a remote mining/archeology station in a snow field discovers a ice-man frozen, who wakes up and escapes while the scientists flee. I have a lot more detail in my head but I'll make it a bit more visible soon.

Just a quick look at progress on the re-doing of the animatic, here it is so far:

Any feedback welcome as always!

I was rummaging thought some of my favourite short animations and came across these, thought they seemed very applicable for the study of dialogue-free but sound based animations. This top one, 'Moon Boy' is my favourite I think and holds so much character and emotion with very little sound.

Here are some other nice ones:

No, not a form of water torture for pigs, but storyboarding this piggy animation. Here are a few still from the various parts, before being put into an animatic:

As we're working in a group for this project we needed a way to coordinate our work and make sure we were all aware of what each other are doing. We have a couple of systems set up to manage this, the first being the information sponge that is Facebook. A simple group on there enables to to share images and opinions between the group without the need for a meeting.

The other method works better for larger files and more specific assets. Dropbox is a perfect program allowing the sharing of any kinds of file, and I see it getting a lot of use when we start work on the flash animation and need to share assets and files.

Here are a few recorded sound files I created with a dictaphone for the narrative construction module task:

- well, sort of. It's pretty nifty now I know some of how it works and what to do with it after a two day training course.

Behold! The fruits of my labour!

There were a couple more but they required video hosting or other annoying things so you'll just have to imagine them.

A few resources while looking at making pigs/piggy banks ready for animation and making them appeal to the target market (students):

Various early ideas for the pig and his different stages:

Early Idea for 'Dr. Pig' who gives the advice.

Digital Animation Module Start

The task is to create a short animation based on the Student Services Finance Piggy Bank (pictured above), appealing to students and telling the moral of saving wisely, also with possible interactive elements. We must present an outline brief and animatic in just under two weeks, with the intention of treating as a job brief. Treating it as a group project seemed to fit well with this, so it's Myself, John and Claire.

I have my flash training course at the start of next week so won't think too big until I know what I'll be able to do with Flash after that.

For now it's just researching, character designing and early story-boarding.

Slides and story from the first task:

I’d woke up, bleary eyed, and had automatically reached for the alarm that wasn't there. I’d moved it the night before to remind me of something. Instead, my hand had found a small piece of crumpled paper, and as soon as my fingers touched it, I knew what was hastily scrawled on it. All the emotion and motivation from the night before pounced back into my still sleepy thoughts, like a mental espresso, forcing me awake.

I let the paper fall to the floor as I swung myself out of bed and onto the computer. As the word processor loaded up and my fingers hovered over the keys, and wondered how best to word my resignation for a job I truly loathed. I came to a conclusion; Sod it, those bastards wouldn't have done the same for me, I'm not working my notice. No more being a doormat. I relaxed and as I questioned what I should be doing next, a second thought hit me:

I was free. It washed over me like a wave. Four years and that was that. The tinge of sadness I thought would be there wasn't. Just relief. Nagging thoughts and worries started trying to creep in, but for once it was easy to ignore them. I'd done enough listening to those and look where it had gotten me.

The words from scrap of paper on the floor from the night before were still running around my head, making sure I didn't forget them.

“you’re going to die. do something worthwhile”

So what was next? I sat there, suddenly lost in thought at a future that had just opened up. I wanted to relax and enjoy the moment, but I knew I needed to plan the changes that were about to be forced into my life. Very welcome changes.

So I guess this is a thank-you. A thank-you to a book and an author, whose words made me grasp what Carpe Diem really meant. It led me to who I am today, and still influences me on who I want to become.

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