Friday 21 November 2014

Final Major Project: Planning

The time has come to plan my final major project. My Final Major Project is a project or group of projects that I will work on over the last 16 weeks of my final year. They must add up to 80 seconds. We can choose what it is we work on and how many projects we choose to take on as long as at least 50% of the work is collaborative.

For me, this is the project that will give me the material for my final show reel before I graduate, so I bared that in mind when deciding what projects to work on.
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My classmates had a chance to pitch any projects they had already planned and wanted to direct. This was an opportunity for the rest of us to make a decision on who we would like to work with and what projects would best suit us. I decided to choose my collaborative projects first and then fill in any gaps with personal projects so I have a well rounded show reel at the end of the year.

Collaborative Projects:
- Dance Off [20 seconds]
- Alpha [20 seconds]
- Tree Project [10 seconds]

'Dance Off' is a project I will be working as an animator on. It is planned to be a short film set at a high school prom. The main character attempts to make his way across the dance floor while being ambushed by various girls trying to win him over by dance.
I decided to work on this project as I think it will be a great opportunity to work on body mechanics and two character interaction. The short is planned to be very funny and cartoony, so it will also be an opportunity for me to try a more exaggerated animation style.

'Alpha' is a project that I will be co-directing and also working as head of animation. 'Alpha' planned to be a short film that works as an advertisement for a game. The main characters are a girl and her creature companion. The game would about the two of them exploring and hunting down these 'Alpha' creatures. The short follows them as they make their discovery of an Alpha for the first time.
I was drawn to this project because of the light hearted humor and the dynamic between the two characters. I think this is a good project as it gives me a chance to work on my non human character animation. This is also a much slower piece to 'Dance Off' so I will have a chance to work on more subtle animation.

The tree project is a artistic short I was asked to animate on. Its planned to be a very short piece of animation, where a tree-like creature walks to the top of a hill and releases spoors into the wind.
This will be fairly simple animation but I think is a good chance to work on a walk cycle for a large heavy creature. Also, this is planned to be a very technical artistic short, with wind dynamics moving grass and leaves and many particle effects with glowing spoors and fire flies. I think this will be something different to add to my show reel and make it pop.
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As I want to get into character animation, I wanted to mainly work on characters for my personal project. I also intend to fill in any gaps in my collaborative projects with my personal. I want my show reel at the end of the year to fully represent who I want to be as an animator when I graduate. I also want to work on things that I know I will enjoy and things I havent had the opportunity try out. I want my personal projects to be fun but push me as an animator.

Personal Projects:
- Dialogue #1 [10 seconds]
- Dialogue #1[10 seconds]
- Body Mechanics [10 seconds]

With the collaborative projects planned, I had a lot of mimed acting but no dialogue, so I decided to work on two different dialogue pieces. The plan is to have one male and one female as I would like the chance to use both the Mery and Malcolm rigs.
For one of my dialogue pieces I would like to work on something very emotional with quite I high intensity. I feel most of my collaborative work is fun and light hearted so I want to make sure I have something serious in my show reel too. It may end out sticking out a little in my show reel but its something I am desperate to have a go at.
To balance out the first dialogue, I would like something that is quite funny. Possibly a piece where I can play around with a lot of gestures and comedic timing. Of course, when it comes to finding a sound clip, it could all change.

Finally, I wanted to work on some more body mechanics. Although its not the main thing I would like to do, I feel its been very useful for me in the past and helps with timing and weight. Last year I really enjoyed working on my gymnastics project, so I think I will try something similar again this year, but perhaps more difficult. I would like to try to animate some free-running and parkour as I thunk it would be very challenging but fun. I would also really like to use the Stewart rig again, and I think it would be well suited for something like this.
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Now everything is all planned, its onto pre-production!

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