AHEAD OF MY OWN SCHEDULE! (For this project at least)

After a few days of worrying that I won’t be able to come up with an animation idea that would express my characters personality in full whilst still being a unique idea, and worrying about what sound to use, how to create the sound, and generally getting off track by starting to research into ways to ‘express the self’ via ballet, mime and music, and re-thinking my whole character personality to mould it around a ‘theme’ for the animation (such as mime, ballet or music) , I’ve finally come up with a full treatment and mental storyboard (several days before the schedule I set myself!!!) that I will spend the day getting down on paper.

I did this by keeping in mind the brief’s requirements, comments Angie and Michael made in class on Thursday about being strict with deadlines for yourself, leaving time to create a high quality final piece, and being self aware of when valid research becomes procrastination, as well as, most importantly, a belief in my character idea.

The brief requires that a character personality be developed, and animation be used to express this. It is not asking for an animation idea or plot for the character to be servant to, but the other way around. The animation is servant to the characters identity. Keeping that in mind, I decided to stay firm in my belief that I have created a good character. He is realistic, visually attractive and will be engaging of the audience in a way that triggers anthropomorphic thinking and a sense of believability that he has an off screen life and daily routine. My animation will be true to this, it will highlight the characters most common emotions and aspects of his daily routine, and use a sense of humour that I will try to spark with my characters facial expressions at certain events. I feel that the ‘script’/treatment I have written for the animation fully expresses the key points of the characters profile and will allow me to focus on using his emotions and behavioural mannerisms to bring him to life rather than plot events. As for being original, I am going to achieve this through my visual look. I have in mind an exact way I want the animation to appear visually, which will be in keeping with the personality of the character. I will be using After Effects to create the animation and will make use of 3d Space but with 2d objects, in a environment. All the elements that are important will be highly detailed and of excellent quality. I have already created all the components that form my character, and so will now create a detailed storyboard to work on using photographs and materials I plan to use in the animation.

Regarding sound, I will leave time to create this at the end, and will try and compose something myself in Garage Band. I will also record the diagetic sounds I need in the locations I am storyboarding to add a sense of realism to the soundtrack.