500 Word Journal

500 Word Journal


Through the semester pre production has had its challenges. I first thought that writing the poem, the visuals will write themselves; which is true is some respects. The part where it gets confusing is the timing of shots Vs when the poem is delivered, and how it is delivered.
After weeks of stressing, I ended up drawing every shot that popped into my head, just to get my storyboard and Animatic to some state of completion. The Animatic and Storyboard I have at the moment is not quite what I envision the final animation to be. What I have done has been useful to make me realise what I do want.

The Animatic I have now is far too literal, and matches the words of the poem. I would like to visuals to be much more subtitle to allow the audience to process the words as apposed to trying to keep up with a racing edit. I see the final animation having longer shots and not as many cuts as my Animatic. I think that this will match the pace of the poem much better.
The initial Character design wasn’t a long process, but the way I want to animate him relies heavily on how he is constructed and how technical the sculpt is. The general idea for the character animation is to have hard areas on the character that look like wood and the soft plasticine over the top of that. When the character moves (eg: Pounds fist into the ground), the plasticine will tear off and expose the wood underneath.

The same principle will apply to the head. The bone structure of the head will have a angry expression that I cannot manipulate. A plasticine brow will cover the angry expression so I can show other expressions (eg, sad). When Solomon gets angry the plasticine will tear off to expose the angry expression. At the moment I am sculpting the head, it has been a slightly longer process then I first thought. I have to sculpt the scull, keeping in mind that a plasticine brow will sit over the top of it. It has started to work now so it should be done by the end of this week.
When I first wrote the story the clouds where not going to be a large component. As I developed it further I thought that the “weather” should have a face/ personality, this lead to creating the cloud monster.

Through the semester I have been looking for different materials to create the clouds. What I found to be the cheapest and the most accessible is teddy bear stuffing, I found a 1 kg bag for 12 dollars. The stuffing holds its shape really well, I think it will take time but animating it will work well.

Lighting for my film last year was a big drama. This year the school have organised Dedo lights that I can borrow for long periods of time. This is amazing! A kit comes with 3 lights in it witch I think will work for the most part. I have spoken to Andrew and he has said that it should not be a problem to borrow or than on kit, if they are available. This would allow me to have 6 lights, which will be more than enough.
i think im in a good position at the moment, i hope to have the Narration recorded and the base of the set built before we go into holidays.
Fingers crossed
Cheers