New Ideas

So I need ideas that I can animate in a stop-motion film.

Two so far:

#1 - Lucky 13.

A man takes no heed of superstitions such as walking under ladders, black cats, walking over 3 drains etc. On Friday 13th, he carries on as normal, however every time he does something supposedly unlucky, a bad thing happens.

However, it turns out that all of the bad things have contributed to him being late and avoiding a massive accident which would have killed him.

#2 - Living Doll/The Artist

Artist's mannequin comes to life when no-one else is around. Tries to get off his stand. When he does, he begins to paint. What he paints can be CGed and visual effects using particles, reminiscent of the animation I did of the cello before.


At the moment I'm liking the 2nd idea more, mainly because I already have everything I would need for it. 

Next Animation...

Started on drafting ideas for my next animation... all I know so far is that I'm going to use stop motion and combine it with some form of CGI to keep the digital aspect.

Watch this space basically

It's finished!!!

After weeks of mostly hard work, my animation is finally finished, rendered, and burned onto two dvds. So I figured this would be the perfect time to update the blog...

I have managed to stay quite true to my original key narrative points, however I have had to scrap the trying to help people point, because of time restraints, and also because it flowed perfectly well without it in there.

So it now goes along the lines of a man leaving his house, seeing that everything is good in the world, he goes to work and has a normal day. As he is leaving work a link in the chain which holds on his visor breaks and falls off. The man then sees the world for how it really is, and runs away scared. When he gets to his house, he looks through the visor, and sees how he'd been living a lie. He tosses the visor to the ground, and walks off into the rain. He sits in a cave in the hills overlooking his town. The girl who he works with suddenly appears next to him, and sits down. End.

I have tried consistently throughout the animation to include references to Plato's allegory. For example, the chains which hold the visor onto the people's head represent the chains holding the prisoners in the cave. The cave itself also stands as a pretty obvious representation, however I have swapped it around with the prisoners leaving the cave to achieve enlightenment with the man going into the cave once he has seen the world for how it really is. Lastly, when the girl appears in the cave, you first see her shadow, which is reminiscent of the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.

In terms of music, I bought 3 copyright free tracks from AKM Music (akmmusic.co.uk) which represented the three main emotions I wanted to portray; calm and happy, terror and shock, and melancholy. I edited these tracks together with some free sound effects which I thought would help add to the animation, such as machinery sounds in the factory, and sounds of rain and fire etc.

That'll do for now, I'll update more later on

the good bit, but more of it

Added an extra scene, a new camera shot, and new characters.

First 43 seconds; The good bit

So I've been working on my animation periodically, while trying to get work done for my other subjects too, but I now feel that I've made enough progress with this to be able to post it on here.

This is still in the rough stages, I intend to add more people to many of the scenes, specifically the ones involving the factory. In the interior scene he will have a girl standing next to him, and also items moving across the conveyor belt. Outside the factory will be other people leaving work as well.

The next stage is obviously to show the world how it really is when the mask is removed, but for now, enjoy

New Factory Scene

This is the 2nd scene, the man walking to work. The cars drive by him and he waves.

Storyboards

It's taken me a while to get around to scanning these in, but here they are:

They are only rough ones at the moment, but they highlight the key scenes and shots I intend to animate.