Two Minute Animation Ideas/ Research

Two Minute Film Ideas

Idea 1- Twisted Reality

This Idea stems from a personal experience of mine.
The Nightmare was after I had surgery for the first time. I was recovering and would get pains in my neck whilst I was healing and I think it must have come out into my dreams.

A woman wakes up in a dark room and is strapped down onto a table unable to move with just the light on her surrounded by doctors and surgeons who will not respond to her whilst she is trying to talk to them and shout at them. No matter how much she would scream it would go unnoticed. There is quiet music on in the background.

The woman is soaked in a cold sweat and shaking and then her whole body freezes up as her eyes catch the surgeon leaning over her with a scalpel. The scalpel slowly slices her throat, a small cut to begin with then a deeper slice, she start to feel as though she is choking on her own blood. Unable to move, looking up at the surgeon. Helpless.

She has absolutely no control over her actions. The woman just lies there and allows the surgeon to continue whilst she feels everything, every little slice. A tear rolls down her face as she realises this is something that she can not stop or change and that it is going to change her life forever.

I would like to do this animation in grey tones with hints of colour throughout. In 2D and possibly in a stop motion environment.

Idea 2- The Power of Nerves

The power of nerves would be a comical demonstration showing someone preparing for a presentation with a "how to" guide on  being nervous, why it effects the person and how to try to control it. It would include the effects of being nervous including sweating, increased heart rate, stuttering, blushing, butterflies in stomach/ nausea. The fight or flight response that is linked to nerves. The animation would be shown through the presenters eyes, how he/shy is feeling and can cope.

Idea 3- A Decision to Make

A man is walking through some woodlands when he comes up to a lake. Across the lake he notices a glass house. He walks around the lake until he reaches the house. He peers inside and notices it is dark and empty apart from there is a baby in the middle of the floor. He picks up the baby and starts to cry shouting "I don't understand! What is it that you want me to do?"
He is then transported to a different location with only the baby's blanket left in his hands and sees a group of homeless children walking around the dark streets. He walks up to a young girl and asks where he is. She replies "You are where they send all of the unwanted children, the factory".
He looks around and suddenly there are hundreds of children hiding in the dark shadows of the factory.
"Why were you all sent here?" He asks.
" Unwanted children have to go somewhere right? "
The little girl starts to walk away through the factory and the man follows.
They both turn around and jump shocked by a big bang.
"quick follow me!" The little girl whispers and leads him to little room and locks the door.
"You look very familiar, Have I seen you before?" The man asks.
The girl just smiles.
There is a bang on the door and the little girl gasps....

The man wakes up from his dream and turns towards his sleeping pregnant girlfriend, kisses her stomach and whispers " You will always be wanted with me around baby girl".

Idea 4- Solar Power

The world came to  an apocalyptic halt when harvesting solar power through solar panels unleashed something terrifying into the world. A being had been waiting, stored in panels and electrical appliances until the perfect time to strike arose. It wanted its power and energy back since it could not return home. There were very few survivors of the devastation it had unleashed on the world but the survivors were fighters and would not give up. There were two male survivors at a petrol station attempting to keep out of sight. The solar being was waiting in a pay phone for someone gullible to walk past and pick it up. A man went to check the phone and picked it up then transformed into this hideous thing, his skin like the sun, some sort of distorted figure with strong stretchable limbs and very fast. Looked nothing like the man he was before. It caught one of the men and said it wanted everyone he has ever loved or it will kill all the remaining survivors and leave the earth bare. The man tried to escape and find the monsters weakness but it had none, it was too powerful. The monster ran for him and scooped him up then trough him onto a broken bridge barely hanging on by wires. The once brave man was brave no more, realising everything that he loves could just disappear. He tried to get back up off the bridge, clawing his way up but he could not. Realising his brother could already be dead back at the petrol station he waited. Waited for the monster to come back to finish him off.

Choosing a final idea

For my two minute film I have decided to choose " A decision to make" as I think it has more of a story to it that might grab the audiences attention and keep them guessing to the very end. 

I was thinking of doing the animation in either paper or dark colours kind of like a silhouette feel as it is dream based. I am heading more towards stop motion for this animation as I feel it might be a bit tricky to do as 2D in photoshop and may look better when created using a multiplane. I have never made something like this before so will be completely new to me.

United airlines advert, paper heart animation

I have come to realise that the silhouette style might not actually be the best style for my two minute film as it will be hard to get the emotion across. I have been trying to come up with my own style but don't want it to be too complicated to animate as I will be using photoshop and after effects to create my two minute film.

A decision to make full script

Drawing around every day objects

DD2000 Sustainability

Sustainability

Can a designer influence change in our sustainable behaviours?

From my personal opinion I believe that a good designer can change a persons view on sustainability. How we can change the world and make it better one tiny step at a time. If an animator for example can catch an audiences attention for a few short minutes and make them realise what is happening to the world and what will happen if things don't change to help the earth's stability it could change that person's view to help the world even if it is for a little while or if they change a few things that they do in every day life. 

It can be difficult to pay attention to information being shared if you have to read so much of it. Videos are much easier to watch and pleasant making the information sink in our heads and stick so we can remember it clearly. Visuals can be very powerful. The audience might be captivated by the style of the artist which draws them in and enables them to pay more attention to what is going on in the animation which causes them to take action and want to make a difference. Designers have the power to influence change through visuals stimulating the audiences mind and making enough of an impact to temporarily or maybe permanently alter their perception of how they can take care of the world and enable it to be sustainable.

I have found a short animation that explains sustainability rather well. It talks about the four rules that are in place to take care of the planet which in return gives us clean food, water and air.

This animation was created for RealEyes by Igloo animations.

According to the EPA sustainability is based on a simple principle, everything that we need for our survival and well- being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment.  Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations. Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment.

Animators could change sustainable behaviours by focusing on educating young children. Today's children could be tomorrows potential polluters. Society needs to encourage young children to become environmentally aware and one of the best ways to do that is through animation. Children's brains are like a sponge at such a young age, they soak up all sorts of information. Children are also very focused by visual stimulation such as animations and computer games. Children should know where their energy comes from, how certain species of animals have become and will end up becoming extinct, the effects of global warming/ climate change, why water is becoming scarce and how to begin to make the world better and improve it for years to come, to enable future generations to live in a sustainable world. 

Animation is very quick and to the point with it being able to cross barriers such as age, gender, language and cultural, it is able to reach a wide range of audiences. 

If information about sustainability is instilled in children from a young age then this could drastically help the planet in the future helping children understand complex issues such as climate change, energy, natural resources and water resources. 

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/Projects/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspPage&n_proj_id=3313

Sustainability shown in animated movies

There are current and old animated films that display sustainability in a very big way and try to make the viewers aware of their actions on the planet by showing them what can happen if they do not look after the planet and that in fact they are only making future situations worse for themselves. Some animations get the point across a bit better than others and some are mainly fictional with scenarios that could not possibly happen but the point still stands and it is still there whether people believe it is real or not. Here are a few of the animated movies  with their descriptions as well as their link to sustainability.

Ferngully The last rainforest (1992):

This film has a  message about the human species polluting and destroying the environment as well as a message about animal testing. It shows how fairies are caring for the forest and heal it with their magic then humans come along and mark the trees with X to be chopped down. By doing this they release an evil that is called Hexxus and wants to destroy the whole of the rainforest taking over the log machine. Of course good prevails like it does in all children's films but we could not be so lucky when it comes to reality. 

Walle (2008):

Life becomes unsustainable on earth due to rising toxicity levels which forces the human race to leave the planet and float around in space until it is safe to go home when the Walle robots have cleaned the planet. The humans become to lazy in space unable to move from levitating chairs, bones shrunk over generations due to not being used at all. They are only able to get back to planet earth due to the robots help and determination to get them there to clean up the planet and take care of it once again.

Happy feet (2006):

Happy feet is about a penguin, (Mumbo) that does not fit in because he can not sing but in fact dances instead. The animated film also leans towards an environmental storyline pointing out over fishing and the effects it can have, a chain reaction on wild life. In the film a penguin has some plastic wrapped around its neck and Mumbo follows a fishing ship to try and see what is happening. He ends up being away from home and when being taken back has a tracking device fixed to his back. When he gets back the humans follow him and realise what their rubbish pollution and overfishing is doing to the penguins and so they ban fishing in the Antarctic. 

The Lorax (2012):

The lorax is the creature that takes care of the trees which are essential to the planets sustainability. The Onceler ignores the Lorax's warning about cutting down the trees and takes the Lorax for granted and betrays him by cutting down all of the trees to make his thneeds not realising that he has ended up polluting the town where trees now don't exist and people have to resort to buying air.  

The Onceler does not realise the consequences of his actions until it is too late. The animals have to relocate as they no longer have a home, it is filled with oil from factories, no clean water, all due to the greed of humans.

Simple everyday ways to help save the planet

I have been looking into simple things that Designers and people in general can do to help save the planet. Whilst doing that I found this image on a blog about design which shows the six R's to use when designing products.

http://newthdesign.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/6-rs-in-design-process.html

There are hundreds of little ways in which everybody could help save the planet each day if they were to change certain things in their every day routines or change certain objects they use. I am going to list just a few things that everybody could do to help save the planet.

• Use energy saving bulbs
• Turn off computers or any other devices that might be plugged into mains either at night or during the day when you are not using them. Do not have them on stand by. Just switch them off when you are not using them.
• Don't rinse plates before putting them in the dish washer, this saves on a lot of water that could be used in better ways.
• Recycle. Glass, plastic. These materials take thousands if not millions of years to decompose and are doing so much damage to the earth and soil, not to mention animals mistake them for food every day which causes unnecessary deaths. 
• Hand dry clothes instead of using a tumble dryer.
• Shower instead of having a bath. A bath uses twice as much water and having a shower saves so much more time and energy not to mention lower costs.
• Turn off lights when they are not being used or if they are not needed. Use the natural light source during the day time instead of turning on lights.
• Use rechargeable batteries.

That is just a small list of ways in which you can help the environment. There are lots more ways which are available at this link: 50 ways to help save the planet

On the other hand Animators might not be able to influence change in our sustainable behaviours as people will do what they want to do. You can allow somebody to watch an animated film and they might be moved by it but that does not mean that they will change the way they behave or act towards the environment. People need to be influenced by others in order to change, to make a difference.

Design has tried to help sustainability in the past by designing the paper bag, but by using paper bags thousands of trees are being cut down and used to make them and paper production emits air pollution. 

According to Jane McGrath's article "Paper production emits air pollution, specifically 70 percent more pollution that the production of plastic bags. According to certain studies, manufacturing paper emits 80 percent more greenhouse gases." 

So the plastic bag came along which lasts longer, it is a lot more durable than a paper bag but is also very bad for the environment. It is a danger to wildlife, causes litter all over the planet and takes thousands of years to degrade. 

"Litter: Littered plastic bags are everywhere today- blown around streets, stuck in fences and trees."

"Danger to wildlife: Plastic waste is deceptive for birds and other wildlife, who mistake it for food. And you can imagine how eating plastic messes with an animal's intestine. As a result, animal's can die of starvation."

"Long term degrading: Light breaks plastic down so it photodegrades rather than biodegrades. Estimates say that this process can take up to 500 or even 1000 years in landfills."

These products were designed and both are not great for the environment and designers are still yet to come up with a cheaper and safer product to be used.

Snoreeze Advert: Production

As part of a university project the class was asked to come up with three ideas for snoreeze then choose one of them to pitch to the company. I pitched my lion idea to them and they chose it as one of the ideas to be made into an advert. The class has been put in four groups and we all have roles to play in making sure the advert is finished for the end of January 2015.
For the advert we are using Kates style and doing stop frame animation.
Throughout the project:
I am the main Director and animator
Kate will be the Art Director and animator
Matt will do model making and animation
Paul will also do model making and animation.

With the advert being produced in Kates style I redesigned the storyboards, scripts and timing and asked Kate to apply her style to the images I already set out.

A few changes have had to be made to the storyboard upon the customers request. In shot one the sheep will now be jumping over the fence from the side and there will be a group of sheep.  

I have also asked Kate to do some character designs so we can decide on how we will be using the product colours throughout the animation. She has produced quite a few colour palettes to choose from.

The advert is split into two styles. The real world will be in Indian ink or water colour, paper and cardboard and the dream world will be made from different types of fabric and materials.

The storyboard has had a few more changes to it upon the customers request. The sheep are now jumping over the fence in shot one from the side and the snoreeze logo is now the lens instead of the moon.

I have made a schedule for all four people in the group until the end of January 2014 so we are aware of exactly what we need to do, the time limits and when it needs to be finished.
Schedule

We made an animatic to show roughly the materials we will be using and style. Sound effects are included.

We decided that we were going to animate using the multi plane. This was the first time I had used the multi plane and dragon frame.

After the animatic was made a few people in the group decided they wanted to change the jobs that I had assigned them on the schedule and did not really discuss this with me but when they finally did I agreed to it but it did leave me being confused later on when some parts of the animation had been missed out.

Kate now was animating her characters as she really wanted to which I was originally going to do, I animated the sheep/ lion transformation and jumps, matt did the sheep jumps in shot one as well as post production and Paul was supposed to do the demonstration animation and clean up the last shots but he did not do the demonstration animation bit so I said I would do it but needed the new sound effects that Mario sent to Kate but Kate did not give me the new audio files so decided to do it herself. 

I decided to do a little test in photoshop to get an idea of how I would do the transformation and to sort out timing correctly. Here are some images from the 5 second animation I did.

Here is a link to the practice animation:

Sheep/ lion test

When animating using fabric, I had spent a lot of money on fabrics and materials so Matt kindly offered to buy the lollipop sticks and made a fence for me to use in my animation. I did want the grass to be cut into a hill and told Matt this a lot of times before he started animating but he did not do it so I had to animate the same way he did so that it would not look too different. Here is a link to the fabric transformation scene:

Fabric Lion

We would discuss the work through a facebook group conversation and would share our work through dropbox.

Here is the link to the almost finished advert animation, just needs a few more tweaks. I have asked for the shadows to be removed in post production and to see whether we can adjust the lighting in the animation. I personally preferred the old audio files for the voice over and it seemed more lively and friendly but we had to redo them as that is what the company requested. 

Snoreeze advert

Snoreeze contacted the group for some last minute changes which caused a bit of conflict within the group as changes were made without me seeing them and then snoreeze wanted things to be the way I had designed not the way they had been changed but changing them back would cause a lot of work and reanimating.

One second animation (or sometimes more) a week project

One of the projects is to do one second of animation a week so we keep on practicing and improving our skills. We practice the fundamentals of animation and can do whatever we want to for the animations.

Heart beating.

Snowglobe.

Cat.

Dark eyes

Friday.

Forest creature character development, model and set.

From my chosen animals for my woodland creature project I decided to do a few character sketches of my chosen animals and see which one I liked best.

Gentleman Deer

Quite an old character who teaches the young woodland animals manners and how to behave in a suitable manner.

Dormouse

Macey the dormouse is a frantic cleaner, middle aged and always wants the woods to be litter free.

Bat

Batty, a crazy scientist who lives to do weird experiments.

Fox

I have chosen my fox character to be my main character for the project.

Jared is a red fox with an unusual hobby of taking pictures of humans. During the day he stays in his den with his family and at night he patrols the city looking for camera  parts and taking pictures of humans as he finds them fascinating. 

Few idea sketches for Jared

Trying to figure out how I want his face to look.

Few facial and emotion sketches, could do with doing more of these.

Sketches to find legs and feet I like.

Hands.

Few colour palette tests

Few sketches on pictures Jared might take. Need to do more of these too. He takes pictures in public places. 

Final character design.

Sculpting my model and making my set

I started making a camera for my fox out of sculpey to test my tools and see if I could get it to look the way I wanted to. It was only supposed to be a tester but I ended up using it as the actual camera as the size was perfect.

I drew a to scale version of my fox design and made a skeleton for my fox out of Aluminium wire and putty.

I then bulked my character up with foil and masking tape.

He ended up look a bit like a duck/ rat hybrid. I also had to change my design so the tail was longer so that he could stand up and balance properly but I added it to his back story so that he uses his tail to hide from people.

I started to sculpt the facial features and smooth the sculpey a bit, figure out where I wanted everything to go then worked onwards from there.

The tail kept on falling off so in the end I pulled it off and did it separately, then added it on again with putty and sculpey.

The finished result after baking, just need to paint it now.

 I bought some sculpting paints but some of the colours I ordered were wrong so I had to try and mix a few colours together to get close enough to the colour I wanted.

 This image is to try and show that the hands and feet are different colours even though the colour change is only subtle.

I made the set out of a cardboard box, tape and paper mache. 

I added a few little touches such as a working light and pegs for the photos.

I am very happy with the way my model turned out even though it turned out looking a bit different than I expected but I still really like the end result.