Day 4: Story Development and Imagery Research

Today I finally got around to writing the ending for the story - I wrote 4, actually and did a vote on what was the best ending

Here's the final blurb for my animated short idea:

'The Aztec god of corn starts his first year at school, but quickly gets picked on
for having insanely lame powers – he summons corn. After trying to keep
optimistic and fit in with the other god students, he eventually gives up and
sitting alone, he summons pop corn for lunch – all the other gods look at what
he's eating and ask for some – he summons popcorn for everyone and
becomes happy.'

The next step is to give it more detail and write up a script!! - Speaking of which, We got another assignment, today, to animate a voice test that shows the personality of our main character, through a generic character of our choosing.
We have to write a script for it, but it's only 2-5 seconds long - a small sentence. I'm going to be thinking about that in the holidays and hopefully do some personal work - or maybe just fan art... probably just fan art.

Going back to the initial project - I also did some imagery research to develop the project's art style and scenery designs.

Still trying to find that nice blend of 2D and 3D characters.

I was given the great idea of making the god school look like Greek architecture - from there I went to Egyptian and Aztec temples.

Now I just need to actually start drawing these things, and get more of a feel for it - Should be fun!!

Day 3: Character Concepts and Style Development

Continuing with my character concepts, I was told to deviate from my usual style and experiment with the shapes from the original Aztec picture of Centeotl.

I thought the square head and protruding top lip could look something similar to Eddy's (from Ed, Edd n' Eddy) design - but keeping the intense amount of detail and having form to it, would prove difficult to animate, and since the original Aztec's art style was very 2 dimensional, I thought it's about time I experimented with 2D designs that are more silhouette driven.

After that, I decided to find some possible references to develop this more flat art style - I'll probably make that into a mood board, Tomorrow.

I've also decided to go the 'Wreck It Ralph' route, and give the gods different movement styles based on what culture their from

• Aztec - flat with bouncy cartoony movements
• Greek/Roman - 3D form with realistic animation, but they're constantly striking poses
• Chinese/Hindu - lots of flowing curves with slow flowing animation
• Egyptian - flat - extremely limited animation
• Maori - realistic animation with lots of spirals
• japaneese - flowing curves but fast, snapping motions

Finding an art style that can look good with these multiple animation choices is hard, since some are focussed on 2D and some 3D - Hopefully the mood board will help with this.

Day 2: Story Development and Character Concepts

Since Yesterday, I had a neat, albeit cliché set up for my short - a school for gods, but unfortunately I was stuck on the story - but after an awful lot of brainstorming and help from a lot of people - I've decided on a story outline:

A god is shunned for having the lamest powers for a god. He tries to impress all the other gods, but ultimately fails in a montage of gags. The lame god eventually learns that he is the only one he should be trying to impress.

Vague, I know, but it gives me a lot of room to create some wildly cartoony gags!!

After I had created my vague plot, i started working on a silhouette, and experimenting with the attitude of the character.

The lamest gods I could find was a god of corn and a goddess of potatoes, but the latter didn't have any pictures to reference.

The corn god I chose was an Aztec god called 'Centeotl', which I tried to simplify into a bunch of cartoony little concepts.

For the moment, I am liking where this is heading - it has crossovers of different mythologies with a cartoony slapstick appearance!!

Tomorrow, I plan to finish more concepts and I possibly develop the story - I have an idea that works that potato goddess in as a love interest.

Day 1: Ideation

Today I brainstormed possible ideas for a new animated short film.

I used a brainstorming method that combines both of my lecturer's methods

First I listed down all of my favourite themes in animation and then I listed all of the things that I like in story telling

Not my usual method of brain storming, and it was pretty hard to come up with something, but I eventually did narrow it down to a 3 Ideas that i am really passionate about. Next step was to list the log lines.

I narrowed it down to 3 potential ideas.

1) A dark medieval type world, where a stone cold knight character finds a reality warping sword. When the knight uses the sword to cut something, it will turn into a super zany cartoon, or even mixed media - the knight cannot controll the outcome.

2) A sadistic magical entity, with all-mighty powers has it's own talk show - it's like The Ellen Show crossed with a Genie (from Aladdin)

3) Gods from different religions and cultures attend a god school.

This was a crowd favourite and I ended up getting a lot of help from other students.

The only thing I don't like about the god school idea, is that at this point in time, I can't see this with a cartoony style - tomorrow, we are doing concept designs and possibly mood boards - so who knows?, maybe I can make it work with a cartoony look!!