Today, Sophie, Iredia, Emma, Steve, Clym, James, andy and I were discussing what we could do for the Raven project.
Mostly what we should think about when it comes to character synopsis and what exactly would happen in the script. As we are going for a mockumentary style thats only half and half, for my job role , I have to wait until we have footage we are happy to with to work on. Sophie got as far as how the opening establishing shots would tell the legend of the Ravens and how Charles II decreed a raven must guard the tower of London lest it fall. We would like an anonymous narrator delivering the story very professionally, and when wondering what the birds think of the reputation they have gained from all these storys, we ask the birds what they think. This would be where my animation skills would come into play.
After that we were just having a different toss up of ideas. Mike Smith had a great suggestion for storyboards, in that we draw thumbnails on post it notes
I like this idea, it keeps the illustrations small, they don't go outside the frame, and you can take them off and try a different angle, no fuss, its not totally committed , its there so you can rearrange until you are happy with the order, its rough and you can keep making changes till you are happy. It is the kind of thing I would like to be doing more often.
At the moment Emma's job will be conceptual designs for characters and also Environments I guess, as well as storyboard. So hopefully she absorbed that. Anyway to each their own.
Mike Smith threw out their Chris Mullin as a great conceptual artist.
He had some good examples of rules of thirds. I have the book by Hans Backer about disney concept art he did, so i am already quite familiar with Rules of thirds, but its nice to be reminded of the fundamentals.
Some films suggested were the cabin of Dr. Caligary
this film is rather bizarre and very interesting, I think night of the Demon might be cool too,
and Mike Suggested a touch of Evil. again strong visuals.
We also for the character synopsis suggested something Andy brought up. He found out the Ravens came from different places, such as scotland and south london. So we thought for the lip sync it might be nice to give one a scottish accent and a cockney accent. Iredia suggested Mary Queen of Scots as a possibly candidate for the Black widow Munin. I think the animation will evolve from how the voice actors deliver the lines.
as Munin may or may not have been responsible for the death of the alpha male Thor, its logical that there'd be probing questions directed towards Munin about how she feels about this. And Iredia had a good line from Elizabeth the Golden Age that describes her "She believes she is above the law and because of her status she can get away with murder"
We were thinking about a narrator, someone like John Humphreys who asks quite provocative questions, because we want to get an energetic response, or someone like Stephen Fry. the narrator would be anonymous. and we were thinking maybe we ask a question and montage different answers from different birds.
The birds will be all identical apart from the different colours in feathers and the bracelets around their feet. mostly this is a short cut for the modeling.
We have around 6 weeks to get the modeling done, so in that time I will need to practice with some free rigs of birds to get used to animating this character and see what i can get out of the performance.
Sophie was saying she would like a 2D introduction, one like the intro to a TV show, showing the key characters, the tower of london and narrating the poem about why the ravens are there and the title. this could be interesting, I think After effects is the way to go with this. the intro will come later. we discussed who to get for sound design, i am in contact with Josh Kendall, but i say we send out a wide message to all sound students explaining what it is we are doing, and who would be interested to come see us.
I don't think there will be any music, just lip sync and some folly.
This all seems like a pretty daunting task, no doubt we will have to narrow down the vision to make it possible. I am not worried particularly, we have a plethora of ideas, we just need to pick from the best. I think by the end of term 1, When we have an animatic and set in stone deliverables for term 2, I will feel a lot more sure of how much I can do.
And so..
I will be doing some animation for Sophie's group and if possible, also some for Depa's group, so i will see what I have for thursdays lesson.
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