Story and Design Development

The storyline has changed many times over the last week or so, with us hopefully ending up with something more coherent. David Bull, who previously worked for Aardman animations came round each of the groups to discuss our storylines and offer us advice on what we should keep or maybe change etc. He liked the vibe of ours, being set in an abandoned ride etc, but gave us valid points to think about, such as why the children were out in the middle of nowhere, alone, and it getting dark etc.

We decided to change the storyline, in that the two eldest were leading the youngest to the abandoned ride to throw stones at it. It would be a place they were not aloud to go, but knew of, and was scary and exciting, making them want to vandalise it, to make themselves out to be brave etc infront of Kitty and to tell their friends later.

Another aspect of the story that was altered, was the 7 deadly sins theme. 7 sins would be too many , so we decided to maybe focus on three, but aspects of the storyline were not making sense. We then thought about making the story about their greatest fears, but as we began brainstorming ideas, we realised that people can be scared of anything, so this would be hard to portray. The easiest option, and the best, in our opinion, would be to create rooms with themes that were stereotypically known as scary such as clowns etc and graveyards, and try to portray them in an unconventional way, that would surprise the audience and liven up traditional fears. For Kittys room, we decided on a mix of conventional happy images such as balloons but as I didn't want the happy rooms to be soppy, we added more fun themes such as pirates and treasure!

I have axed the character Cho and replaced her with Dan C's character from the pitch he gave up :)

I have allocated tasks to my group to complete in order for all the work to be completed to a high and unrushed standard. Dan Ryan will create the characters sheets, Dan Cripps will animate the blockout, and myself and Jake will create the concept art. We will all take part in the drawing of the final storyboards as this allows the work to be spread out evenly between us.

Influences and Animation Style.

The following images are some that I found online from the film, 'Shrek the Third'. I want the interior of my ride to follow a smiler artistic style- very cutout, as though straight from a Victorian theatre. Within the cutout I would like machinery as this varies the style and allows many more possibilities when it comes to animating.

An example of both cutout and machinery together.

A tree folding out from the stage. If pulled off properly, this could look really good in the film- sets opening up etc.

Another influence to the whole feel of our film is Tim Burton. I don't want to borrow visuals from his films or create something that people automatically think is a rip off of Tim Burton. Instead, I want to create something that has the same sort of vibes his films give out- a spooky but funny film with great visuals. I also like in his work the way that the oddball is usually the main character and the one the audience feels empathy for. Although Kitty, is seen less in our film than the others, she is the character at the beginning of the film the audience with hopefully feel empathy for, due to the way she is treated by the others. The fact that she wears a headbrace and looks the scariest out of the sisters will hopefully subvert the audiences expectations when they realise she is the nice character and appearances can be deceiving.

The above two images are from one of our previous and most favourite projects. I want to emulate a smiler feel of a stylised environment that is still clearly obvious to the audience that it is earth the characters are on.

I enjoy themeparks and fair rides, so I took the opportunity when researching for my pitch to take photos of the ghost trains at two different places. The top image shows the traditional ghost-train building structure which we are using in our designs. This allows the audience to clearly identify that what the children have stumbled on is a ride. I felt that if we went for the structure of the bottom image, trying to look as though it were not a ride, then this could confuse the audience. The decor for the ride however, will be very different to both images. The look we will be trying to achieve will be creepy but elegant. The creepiness will hopefully be achieved in that the ride did not deliberately try to make itself appear scary like the other two rides above have, but looks worse, due to its years of disrepair.

Concept Work for Pitch and Original Story Direction.

Here be the original concept art that I made for and in some cases included in my pitch (also I do realise the pencil sketches are realy bad, but they were just there for quick reference!):

Character designs:

Above is an expression sheet for Cho. For some reason the text hasn't come out, so her expressions from left to right are: surprised, bored, mean, unimpressed, yawn, scream.

A design for an unused character.



Setting and story:






The sisters looking at a map lost....

(An example of a mask. I thought the front of the ride where the carts are,could be decorated in masks and puppets as these are classic spooky objects which can't be overused.)

The sisters find themselves in front of a desolate funfair ride in the middle of nowhere. As they turn to leave the ride starts up, (lights and music begin) and the eldest, gleefully seeing her sisters discomfort, gets in a cart. The others follow and join her. Cho next to Lee in the front and Kitty in the back.

The cart with the sisters in, ascends....

... the front of the cart where the twins are, breaks off and plunges downwards and into their bad ride.

Examples of rooms that the twins could find themselves in. The rooms were to be based loosely around the seven deadly sins. Here is an example for gluttony showing robotic people eating continuously and a 'wrath' based room where there is use of war and weapons etc.

A contrast to the gluttony room, where Kitty would be given delicate treats etc on a silver platter.

The final finale, where the twins would be eaten by a massive chomping mouth. I want the film to have a happy ending with all three sisters leaving the ride alive and with the elder two having learnt something (but not in a soppy way!). At this point I'm not sure how the ride will end, this was just a basic idea, as I didn't think it worth developing unless my idea got picked. Now that it has, the ending, along with the rest of the story will have to be discussed together with my whole group until we can plan something that we are really happy with.

Story Origins:

The idea for the story came about last year when we thought that the next project we would be starting, would be another group activity (it turned out not to be). Myself, Dans and Jake, tried to find a theme we would all be happy working on. We agreed on funfairs as we all like to create work along the spooky genre. We also discussed having two different experiences within the ride. I developed the idea at the time, by adding the seven deadly sins theme and the style our animation would look like. As we couldn't work in a group that term, the idea was discarded. When it came to this term to pitch ideas, I asked the others if I could develop the idea further, with characters etc and concept work. They agreed as I had come up with alot of the ideas previously.

Blockout:

I created a rough blockout for my pitch to show the possibility of the very dramatic camera angles my outward setting could allow. Hopefully, with the group, we can use this in the animatic and to work on shots for our storyboard. I plan for us to make as a group, a blockout of the other rooms, for the same purposes, after we have all decided on a story that we are happy to pursue.

Original Story Synopsis, Character Profiles and Film Details.

The story is about three sisters, who whilst on the same funfair ride, undergo two completely different experiences due to the way the ride perceives their personalities and the direction it thinks they could go in life.

The twins embark on a negative ride to show them the way their lives are heading, whilst in contrast, the youngest sibling enjoys a positive ride.

The journey the youngest embarks on, will only be shown in brief clips, to allow the audience knowledge of what is happening to her, but mainly to provide contrasting images to the twins journey, allowing the building of tension and humour.

Character profiles:

Lee is the twin sister of Cho, and is the slightly older twin by 1hour and 40 mins. The leader of her sisters, she is bold, confident and tough. She is also bossy and likes to get her own way.

Although the best by far at inventing games for her and her sisters to play, Lee often takes a sick pleasure in creating dares or going places that she knows will scare her sisters as she feels this increases her authority over them. These adventures often lead the sisters into trouble.

Cho looks up to Lee and goes along with her plans even if she feels uncomfortable with them.

Outwardly grouchy and reserved, she secretly feels inferior to Lee who is thin and pretty and constantly feels frumpy and thick. Most of this insecurity is brought out on Kitty with jibes about her headbrace and unfashionable clothes.

Being the youngest, she often gets bossed about by her older sisters. Not fussed about her appearance and quite happy to wear a headbrace, even to the embarrassment of her sisters, Kitty is quite happy being the oddball of the family.

Because of her head brace, her mouth is constantly in a smile, although it can be relaxed slightly. This adds humour, especially when she is scared, and all her emotions have to be conveyed through her eyes.

Production Notes:

Target audience:
12a. Wide ranging, mainly aimed an audience with a dark sense of humour (Tim Burton appreciating audience).

Production pathway:
3D using Maya, After Effects for compositing possibly.

Style/genre:
It is an spooky, act driven piece, with dark, dry humour. The characters don’t speak but have much expression. It is reasonably fast paced.

Time Length: approx 2 mins.

Introduction

I can't believe my pitch got picked! Really. I never thought it would happen, but now that it has, I feel great. Stressed but great. And lucky too, for two reasons. Firstly for the team I'm working with: Dans and Jake. I know they all work really hard and to a high standard and even when we hate each others guts over artistic differences we usually make it up pretty fast. Secondly because of Dan Cripps, our animator. His pitch got picked too, but he gave it up to work on mine because as a team we could only manage to work on one project. Thanks :)

It's really important to me that we create a film that shows off our talents and produce a story that is spooky, funny and visually exciting. Something we can show people and be proud of. It's going to be loads of work, but I'm confident we can do it.

That is all.