One Night in One City (Czech Animation)

This Czech Animation was awarded the largest grant for any animated production that year,

This is a feature length production of a black comedy story.

The media used is predominantly stop motion, and is suited to the genre with a darker tone.

The animation itself shoes a smooth style and is complimented by an unsettling music score.

My Tasks for over Christmas after tutorial

After the tutorial we have got our separate tasks and elements to contribute o the animation that will be compiled after christmas break.

• Choose a segment of the storyboard and create a piece of concept art for this.
• Possibly consider an animatic to boost digital application in the project.
• We have also considered putting animated 2D elements into the animation and shared these out, I plan to animate secondary characters such as fish swimming in mid air, chocolate bars, post boxes coming to life.
• I have also been given the responsibility to create the Ice cream van for which I'm working on a 2D animated transformation.
• We as a group will meet to film/ shoot the stop motion reactions and walk cycles etc to use in the final animation.

discussions over this week

As we break up for christmas we have agreed as a group on what assets and elements we will be responsible and start testing for. As the marks will be found in digital techniques in the animation, we have chosen and shared out work such as colouring up storyboards, making 2D, 2.5 D and possibly 3D elements to flesh out the animation, the story takes on a surreal aspect after the character falls over and receives a bad blow to the head. This gives us license to create as many abstract shapes and concepts to compliment the initial idea as possible.

Chucky- Wanna Play?

Our Proposal

Brief Proposal for Live Brief

'Rocking Awesome' - (this is just a working title)

KILLING CANCER

Briefly, the outline of the animation is to show the subject matter in a more optimistic way.

The animation will show protagonists in the form of a rock band ready to please the crowd.

They are ready to start to play when the antagonists - The blue dudes are revealed under spotlight and disrupt the concert. They are meant to symbolize cancer disrupting and affecting the body.

The affect this has on the crowd is they become un-well, colour drains from the crowd and they become more and more agitated.

The Band then fight the blue dudes, using the instruments they have and eventually overcoming them

with the use of the laserlights which are part of the set, the metaphor is the new treatment for cancer. ie the PDT.

Script- Initially our concept

Script Idea For 'Rocking Awesome'

Scene 1

The scene opens to crowd waving hands above their heads and gathered in front of a large stage open to the night air.

Flood lights illuminate the empty stage the design is theatrical and elaborate, mosty metal structures in sharp protrusions from a number of differing platforms.

There are three levels to the set scaffolding provides a limited walkway.

The camera moves through the array of arms above te heads of the crowd untill it reveals the set in detail)

A number of close-ups reveal the excitement of the crowd showing hands in the rock horn and screaming mouths.

Scene 2

The Band walk onto the stage making dramatic entrance.

Each Band member bar (bar the lead singer) walk onto the stage from the right, as each character walks on to the set and reach a desired point towards the centre stage they will go into slow motion to almost freeze frame while the graphic of their name slides in from the right faster.

Scene 3

Lead Singer Rises up from the floor of the stage in between the rest of the band who are all in their respective positions after their entrance.

He possibly rises up with his name above his head.

Scene 4

The band are ready to play and are working the crowd in various actions and postures.

Each band member is shown in a close up ready to engage in their action eg hand holding plectrum rising above the strings of the guitar.

Scene 5

Two spotlights turn on and illuminate a small group of small blue creatures (blue dudes) who look and sound distastful. The point is these creatures are the antagonists of plot. Disrupting the concert the blue dudes start to talk in quiet high pitched voices that can not be understood.

Scene 6

The camera spins to the audience who have become paler in colour which drains from the whole scene, the audience are unhappy starting to look angry/ agitated.

Close - ups of faces/ eyes/ mouths reaveal the emotion.

Scene 7

The band members are all shown to react to the situation, this is accomplished with a null backdrop which is intersected by segments of animation showing the close - up of the eyes of the band. This shows the scene mounting to action against the blue dudes.

The next shot is of the blue dudes looking confrontational.

Scene 8

The action begins with the drummer taking up the whole scene throwing two simbols from the drum kit each of these strikes two flanking blue dudes dispersing the group and leaving one blue due standing foremost and alone. This blue dude raises a small skinny arm with fist towards the band.

The bass player raises his arm above the bass and hits each string creating a shockwave in the direction of this antagonist he is blown off the stage and into the screen behind.

The guitarist frees a string from his guitar and uses it as a whip against the remaining blue due who is struck from his feet to hit the stage a few metres behind.

A close - up shows the blue guys they are now beaten and bloody, possibly shaking a little they show their readiness to continue to disrupt the concert, the lead singer is shown in teh next close - up determination showing in his eyes.

The lead singer aises the mic in mic stand above the stage and strikes the floor with the mic, The equiptment shakes and begins to fall, one of the laser lights that have been shining through the fog from the fog machines falls, the lead singer catches this and points it at the blue guys.

After one brief moment of wide eyed fear the blue dudes are vaporised.

Scene 9

The crowd is wild. hundreds of hands again doing the rock horn simbol in the air rise and wave.

Each band member is shown again to ready to play.

END

Right then, for the live brief heres a few dynamics of our characters. - There is one further band member to be posted and working from Dan (Ash)'s character designs I have tried to show the posturing and characteristics of the band. The details of this animation will become more apparent in later posts, this is just the pre production stage at the moment.

See script.

Just a bit of painted comic art, concept art for a series of pieces I'd like to do each getting steadily more abstract - I initially created this to work into digitally and as i learn more about this i will work into the image and post progress up.

Pinball rage leads to chase down of enemies...

Working as a group our pixilation animation has been a successful team effort. The main idea of the piece is admittedly obscured by the other ideas we had that would look best once animated. From this we should take that we must better outline a concept before starting on the production, therefore avoiding the temptation to sway from the initial idea.

Good points were:

• Finding the roles within the work and co operating towards a final outcome.
• Communicating efficiently and effectively to achieve the task.

Areas to improve:

• Pre production and planning a concept to stick to throughout the project.

All in all I think the animation was a success we covered the practicalities of moving subjects through, and interacting with an environment including props and still scenery. The result is an animation that shows a variety of movement and experiments with what we could do with pixilation.

Week Beginning 2nd November

Aims:

Have the Stop motion model finished and line test.

Hand in research file and Development work.

This model sheet is to eventually lead into a stop motion model and shows the elevations of the character that will be seen in the animation. The colours were originally to be painted traditionally with water colour and ink (I may post an example) but this proved time consuming. Instead, I opted for digitally painting the character a method I haven't tried before and will use again in practice.

This is the way it was originally tested to look- a more traditional sense and playing with the texture too.