Week Two Blog

Groups

I have associated myself primarily with four group projects. My primary group project is There's a war in Wunderland, directed by Adam Smith. I was particularily interested in the style of this film, and excited by the prospect of woring on a project that may be linked to one of my favourite bands - Less Than Jake. This project, in my mind, is more like an industry project as we are producing a video musically scored by the band (hopefully). The 2D animated graphics on 3D models suits me perfectly as i wanted to work on 2D projects as well as 3D. I will be working alongside both Adam and Caspar T.Turner on this project.

Cafe de B... by Ash Reemul is a fantastic showreel short which includes comedy and a moral. The idea of the characters being opposites really interested me, there was plenty of scope for varied animation between the large woman and lanky man. I hope to work on concept design for ash.

The Stamp Collector by Becca Chandler interested me because she wanted to work on a 2D project like me. Unfortunately because not many people in our year want to produce an entirely 2D film, she has had to make it in 3D instead. The story really swayed me to work on it as my idea had been fast paced and dynamic where Becca's was more character driven and emotive. I hope to help part-time with concept, modelling and animation.

Group Roles

There's a war in Wunderland: Adam had already completed a lot of concept work on this project so I hope to work primarily on texturing, modelling and animating. I had been set the task of researching the buildings of San Fransisco, where the film is set. This research would be used to help design our 2D buildings. I also drafted some concept designs for robot textures. These were completed in mechanical pencil but if any are chosen i will colour them and begin work on the animated textures.

Cafe de B...: I hope to help Ash throughout the concept process form design to storyboarding. This week I completed some alternate character designs for the elderly man and woman as well as the young coffee shop staff. These designs were drafted in mechanical pencil before I scanned them and coloured them in Macromedia Flash 2004. Unlike my concept designs for Desert Dash, these drawings have outlines around the colour fill. I have been in contact with Ash over the weekend and he is happy for me to draft some model sheets for the old man and the coffee shop staff. He was not as keen on the design of the old woman.

The Stamp Collector: I hope to work on this project from concept through the animation stage. This week I was set the task of researching any element that may be useful to the film. I looked at Bahamas beaches and beach shacks for the environment during the end segment of the film. I also discussed the structure of the story and how it may be shown throughout the 2 minute time constraint. One comment I thought was quite important was that the film is driven by two characters and the collector spends a lot of the film chasing after the stamp before he reaches the girl at the end. I felt that there should be less chase and more character interraction. I asked to be told if anything else was needed of me but to this point I have not had any follow up conversations on the subject.