No more fairytales...

I spent this weekend working on a page of research for the Fairytale segment of the library animation. I looked at backgrounds, fairytale type landscape with castles in the distance. I also looked at how princesses are represnted in tradtion fairytales. Aswell as looking into the frog prince illustrations.

Only to find out today that this section of the story has been scrapped, as it was considered to complicated. I don't mind that it was scrapped, as I am sure this regularly happens in the industry, but I would have appreciated being told, rather than spending time doing pointless research. And what do I do with the work now?

MARK

Questions to ask them.

What are they looking for?
What sounds/music can we use?
Can we include things other than the logo?
Can we use live action?
How long should the animations be?
Can we have a high resolution copy of the logo?
What do they do?
What does MARK stand for?
Colour? Can we introduce it?
How many animations do they need?
What style would they like?
What are they being used for?
Any particular format?
Do they want any other text or information included?

The Producers

I'm excited about being a producer for this new project because I've never been in a leadership role before. I am looking forward to having an opportunity to ask the representative from MARK, the group/organisation of artists, about what they are looking to get out of the animation. So many questions to ask.

I am finding my role within the preproduction team for the library quite limited and disappointing. I really wanted to have a active role in things such as storyboarding but instead have been given menial tasks and very little work.

Personal Project

I've been working on the flash animation in my own time for a while but have become frustrated with the way the piece doesnt seem to flow. And where do I go after that thast I have done so far. I have the story to follow but i am unsure whether to include it all

Watching everyone else's finished ident

this morning we watched everyone's finished ident, and it was a real eye opener, and showed me what can be achieved using different media. i think seeing what other people managed to create using maya is inspiring me to try harder to grasp the techniques and methods of the program

Script Writing

when we were first given this assignment, i was worried because i was unsure about what sort of story i wanted to tell, and whether i should being trying to convey an important message or moral. but then i just figured i should just try to have some fun with it instead. So i have tried to bring some humour to my work. whether or not this will show through, we'll have to wait and see

Finally Finished the OSTN Ident

So last friday, my partner and I finally handed in our Ident, on time. I am well chuffed that it is over and done with. The handing in process was quite traumatising, I struggled to understnad how to save the work onto disk, especially after discovering that none of our pc s were able to write discs. But it was useful to learn how to use the suite down in broadcasting.

Our animation didnt end as we had planned it to, with the wings dropping off, as i couldnt work out how to separate to wings from the rest of the symbol. but I think if i had address that problem earlier on I could have found a solution.

Sound Design

Today my partner and I are going to do the Voice over recordings, using are new found skills, after the recording workshop. We are also going to try to find some real sounds, of birds and general outside noises to go along with our animation. As this is preferred over using pre recorded sounds from a CD

OSTN Ident

For the OSTN Ident project I have been working with Charlotte, as I find working with other people useful, especially when it comes to coming up with ideas. You can bounce of each other to come up with something, that most likely I wouldnt have thought of by myself.

Our animation has been done in flash, as it the programme I am most comfortable with, so its a 2D piece with a painterly background that is piece of charlotte's scanned in work. I think the mix of materials is really affective.

The idea was quite simple. To give the individual letters, in their rectangles, wings and have them fly about the screen to eventually end up with the final four in the centre and merging into the logo.

I'm pleased with the work that we have done so far and I m glad that I was reminded how to create moving symbols in flash in time to complete most of the work.
However, originally we wanted it to appear as though these letter birds were flying towards the screen and hit, with their wings falling off at the end and transforming. But I found that ten seconds hasnt been quite long enought o include this after the flying sequence.

Flash: "I've run out of chocolate"

I've completed my flash animation and I am fairly pleased with the end result. However when I imported the chocolate images into Flash. even though I had edited out the white backgrounds they seeemed to reappear, and if I were to do this again I would try to find out how to correct this, as it held me back from being able to put in a large background.

I found the lip synching itself quite interesting to do, though frustrating at times and I felt as though I could have used several more mouth pieces to create an accurate look.

Adobe Flash

In today's session we had our first introduction to flash, and although I had a brief encounter with it whilst at college, my memories of using it were those of frustration. So today I was glad to find I enjoyed using and being able to quickly bring life to characters and scenes.

After finishing my chair in Maya, and making my 2D design into 3D, I can say that I struggled, as I am not used to thinking in ters of 3D space when designing chraracters and scenes. I think this may be why I lean towards using Flash.

The Chair is COMPLETE!

In yesterday's workshop we completed our chairs, giving them lighting, a floor space to sit upon and rendering them. I enjoyed playing baout with the lighting to create different moods. thinking in 3d is a little easier, but when it came to place the "camera" on the screen I couldn't really understand what it was for.
I then very briefly began to change the chair to resemble more my design, and imprint it with my character. I think I remember more from the week before than I was expecting but still got a little lost at times.
It's quite difficult because you know that you are holding back the rest of the class, and others are far more advance!
I also, and I am quite surprised by this, really enjoyed giving the history and theory presentation on monday. I was really nervous, but Holly and I worked really hard, on getting everything right and I think it went well. looking forward to getting my grade.