Supervisor Meeting - Thursday 16th January 2014

Since the last meeting with our Supervisor our story idea had changed and developed, so first thing was to explain our new rough plot idea (the dog who keeps having his biscuits taken by a bird each time he gets given one by his owner.)
The style of the film needs to be decided. Inspirations already include Simon's Cat and Birdbox's Carpark. If the finished film was to be black and white range of colours, it might look to similar to these, so would preferably like to use colour in our film.
Do we even need a background? Sharon showed us an example - Pocoyo:

Who is our target audience? Aiming at pre-school? Or a general audience that can relate to the situation in the film? Pet-owners? People with an interest in local wildlife/environment?
Need to start storyboarding, the story may have an effect and influence the character designs.
Could look at an organisation to get involved with? - If the film is trying to promote a message. Could have a logo/message written at the end? Example that came to mind was Fed Up - Simon's Sister's Dog with the RSPCA:

We want to make sure the human character has a significant-enough role in the film. (Could be having a BBQ in the garden, bird is a scavenger and gets to scrap bits of food before the dog. Maybe the bird is gathering food for it's young in a nest. Or the owner could be taking the rubbish out, scraps of food from that?)
Production roles within the team were also discussed.
We should all start storyboarding and researching, this will generate more ideas and be more time efficient. Plus the story has an effect and influence on everything else, including character designs, modelling, etc.

For the next Supervisor Meeting in 3 weeks time:

• Have a storyboard (potentially a timed animatic).
• Moodboards of reference and inspiration for the style of film.
• Rough Character designs.
• Production Schedule.
• And anything else we have to show.

"I have an idea!"

After weeks of ideas being thrown around and not deciding upon an idea to go with for our group project, I got an idea, pitched it to the group and all agreed to stick with this one. Now that we have a story idea, we can begin pre-production:
- developing the story/script
- creating storyboards
- editing together animatics
- concept art work
- character design
- environment design

IDEA - 
It's autumn/winter time of year.
An owner gives her dog a biscuit which he takes outside into the garden.
Before he gets a chance to eat it, a bird swoops in and snatches it!
Disappointed, the dog goes and asks his owner for another, which confuses her as she just gave her dog a biscuit?
The same thing happens over the next few days with different comical scenarios of the birds taking the dog's biscuits.
Until one day the dog ends up in a tug of war with one of the birds.
The owner spots this happening from the kitchen window and races outside to choo the bird away! Caw caw!
The owner then realizes that the bird's have been stealing all of the dog's biscuits.
The last shot see's the owner hanging a bird feeder in the garden for the hungry birds and the dog happily munching on his own biscuit finally!

Some concept sketches to explain the story:

This encompasses everything each of us would like to have in a project for each of our own goals: 
a human character and an animal character to rig, 
2 characters with opposite personalities (the dog and the bird), 
an underlying/abstract message, 
and plenty of opportunity for entertaining, humorous, and empathetic performances to animate.

INSPIRATION -
(personally I am inspired by humorous situations observed in everyday life)

Birdbox's Carpark: 

Simon's Cat:

Snow Business

Nut Again

Fed Up - Simon's Sister's Dog with the RSPCA

Alberto Beguerie's The Case of the Broken Lamp: https://vimeo.com/76356337

UNDERLYING MESSAGE -
Food for nature, looking after local wildlife: 
http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/decline/birdsdecline.aspx
http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/index.aspx

Idea Brainstorming

A few doodles and sketches, brainstorming potential ideas for the group project, had a group meeting to discuss everyone's ideas:

Supervisor Meeting 1

Thursday 7th November - Had a meeting with the supervisor for our group, Sharon Campbell. Group members are Kirti Goenka, Sheng Li, Giorgos Ontherox and myself.
We talked over the initial brainstorming of ideas our group has been discussing so far, which have all been based around Kirti's research project involving a story with a message delivered in both a 'gain-framed' and a 'loss-framed' mode.

Some notes from the meeting:
- What audience is the film aimed at?
- Careful not to make the film patronizing if wishing to get a message across, like a public information film
- If going for an environmental theme/message, go to a local organization, eg, green peace, get feedback from the organization, what do the public already know/not know about.

One example Sharon showed us of a short animated film which has a strong message in it, but it is more abstract. 'Badgered', by Sharon Colman, looks at themes of war and nature. The message is clear, but abstract, you might not know the characters very well, but it is suggesting something to the audience:

We also discussed that every element in a film can be manipulated to put across a message, such as colour, composition, sound etc. It is how people respond to different design methods.
If we were to go with the split screen idea, for the research, put across the same message on both sides, but just change one element, eg, colour, to make the experiment more controlled by just changing one variable.
The audience would automatically sense which is right and wrong. Therefore making it more abstract and controlled will benefit the project.
I raised the concern over finishing the film for May/June, earlier to allow time for testing the film on an audience for research. Instead of doing this, Sharon suggested what Kirti could use for testing on an audience for the research project - the animatic. The animatic could explore both versions of the story/film, then we would use the one that received the strongest response for the final film, due for completion in August. If we didn't use an animatic, we could film a live action version which could be used as live action reference for the animation. One of the key challenges/issues here would be that an animatic is not always very clear to fresh eyes, as the audience would be viewing what is essentially a very rough draft of the final film.

The next step for our group is to sit down and lay all of our cards on the table, discussing exactly what we want to get out of this project, this will hopefully make developing an idea for our film easier.

Group Meeting - Split Screen idea...

Tuesday 5th November - Had a group meeting to discuss story ideas.
For creating two stories with different tones, I suggested to the group the idea of splitting the screen in half with the 2 stories on either side. If we were to show the audience one before the other separately, they would have already been influenced by the first first which may affect their viewing of the 2nd. Therefore putting them side-by-side eliminates this problem and actually creates a nice visual contrast between the two.

My references/inspiration for this were:

Coca Cola's advert 'Grandpa' - showing the differences in lifestyle of a man and his grandpa when he was his age, this advert helped to make people aware of healthy living: a balanced diet and of being active:

500 Days of Summer 'Reality versus Expectations' scene - Everyone can relate to this type of experience where we imagine how a situation will play out, but it ends up being completely opposite and not how we originally imagined it:

Other notes from meeting:
- Rough version for June for research, Polished version for hand-in in August?
- Would need to be same style/tone
- For the research do different voices for the narration to change the tones of the films
- Slight differences at beginning, then, gradually differences get bigger and bigger until very different at the end
- Look at people's habits