Litte Loud: Script & Visual Style

I missed my DSA meeting with Gail Theobald today sat 09:00am o I was unable to move this forward on my dissertation. I have managed to push it back to tomorrow at 12:00pm instead.

I also received an email from Kathy. She sent me a link to this CGI animation called Musicotherapie because she liked the use of space combined with the 2D quite graphic looking style. I have no idea what its about but I like the look of it.  She also sent me a link to Aurelie Guillerey's Flikr stream who's work looks like "a 1960's illustrator" and has a lovely quality to it but I don't know if that is the feel of the show. I will have to run it by Pheobe, Hedi and Stu for a second opinion. She also directed me to the work of another French illustrator Jeremiah Decalf for his use of light acknowledging that not all of his work is practical for animation. Dutch illustrator and  Coraline's Visual Development Artists Jon Klassen work caught my attention and I was able to find some more of the Coraline Pre- Production Artwork which is incredible.



I had the chance to pitch my idea to Derek today. He seems to really like the idea and the fact I was able to sum it up so simply. He wants me to consider not making the pilot about the origin story. He suggested creating a title sequence to sum up the origins of the shadow in about 30 seconds to 1 minute and then jumping strait into it. He also felt that the girl and the shadow was one story and their adventures in catching shadows was another show entirely. I will have to have a think about all of this. For now I said I would get a script to him tonight and asked him to send me some ideas for a visual style. When I showed Derek the above artwork he said it reminded him of 101 Dalmations for which I was able to find the (101 Dalmatians) Pre-Production Artwork for.



I have been putting a lot thought into the production process. I am working on story before moving into storyboards as of next week while I have small pre-production team working on visual style. I email Georg about modelling and rigging at the same time to speed up the process as we may as well start testing this as soon as possible.

visual style

script

I have been thinking about pitching today while working on my dissertation. I still have my notes from the Creative Business of Producing Animation course that I ill go over. I am just trying to make everything simple.

I am currently living with "Matt Mario" was in third year of Digital Animation when I was in first year.
I told him I was worried about third years becoming "show reel orientated" instead of "project orientated" towards the end of the year.  He gave me some advice and it was to basically identify what people want from each project at the start of it so you can assign them the roles most beneficial to them. Thats their incentive to get the project finished and to make sure the person before them does the job to a good enough standard.

I have been trying to anticipate a lot of the questions that will come up during the practice and final pitches over these next few weeks. These are some of the questions I am trying to answer:
Why Animation?
What is your estimated budget?
What existing shows is your series like?
Where do you see the series going in the future?

Interesting links on Producing/ Business:
http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/from-pitch-to-production/
http://www.animationmagazine.net/people/trendwatching-with-the-toon-toppers/

I have also had a chat with Lauren Jansons and Sophie Graham about our final major show exhibition. All of the previous Digital Animation final major shows have been terrible and our needs to be something much better. We spoke about using a high tech room in the AIR Building as it would allow us to show our work and make use of the digital space. Myself and Lauren also spoke about having Ryan Woodward come to Falmouth to give a guest lecture sometime this year.

maya shadows render

mood boards: characters, environment

anne owen dissertation feedback

an animated series called little loud
to simplify its about a good little girl with a big bad shadow
its mona the vampire meets the goonies
we follow a trio of kids who fight the supernatural creatures that exist in their town unseen by the adults.
at the core of the series is her relationship with her shadow, and by extent herself

the reason kids will love the show is because her shadow does all the things kids wish they could do but would get in trouble for. The shadow represents that part
edgy, sophisticates humour, witty engaging,

... but with enough pop culture references to keep older audiences chuckling...

the visual style is a throw back to the classic 80's horror

Little Loud Script & Dissertation Lecture

I got im around 10am today and got on with the script for Little Loud. I am using a free script writing program called Celtx which is pretty good. The story is getting there I am hoping to send out a draft late tonight to the lecturers for them to read before Thursday so I can hopefully pitch on Thursday with a better idea in mind for the story to the rest of the class. Scriptwriting is actually quite enjoyable when you have your story planned out otherwise you are literally starring at a blank screen.

I have also been looking for others to join the pre-production team. Over the weekend I contacted Freddy and Lee to do some pre-production work for me. I had a chat with Freddy this morning and he can't commit to my project as he has enough on his plate which his own project which is understandable. Later in the day I bumped into Amber who was more than happy to do some pre-production work along with Lee who will help out with environments. I didn't have the chance to

In the afternoon we had Anne Owen's dissertation lecture. The essence of it is that we need to plan. To be fair I have a plan for my final major project, Little Loud, but I have not planned out the dissertation. But the lecture enabled me to make a plan of action for the following few weeks.

I am going to spend the rest of the night planning out the dissertation time table for me to follow and finishing the script.

I have spent most of the day watching the pilot/ first episodes for all the series that my show has been influenced by:
Scooby Doo (1st episode of all variations)
I Love A Mystery (radio play cited as one of the influences of Scooby Doo)
Power Puff Girls (and the artwork of Margaret Keane who's art inspired the show)
Mona The Vampire
The Goonies
Monsters Inc.
Moonrise Kingdom

I also took at look at several animated series, although no longer on television, that feature black protagonist/ heroes at the centre:
The Proud Family
Bebes's Kids
Static Shock
Adopted By Aliens
Static Shock

These shows are all African American characters and there is currently no African Caribbean, British born character at the centre of any shows. I guess mine would be a first.

Dissertation & Little Loud

This morning Olly, a recent graduate from our course currently working as a Junior Lighting TD at Aardman animations, was nice enough to post a link to his blog called 'The Pixel Crush'. He offeres some very good advice for the third year final major projects

I spend most of the day working on dissertation today as friday is our days of and I have decided to commit to 'Dissertation Weekends' from Friday to Monday every week for at least 4 hours a day. Sound ambition I know but I can pull it off. I was re-reading some of my research and making a color code key to help me organise the information. using marker pens on photocopies, post its in book and reverse out color block in microsoft word. I am using green for introduction, blue for realsim, pink for social realism, yellow for conclusion and blue for quotes. Gail Theobald my dyslexia support gave me the idea as well as helping me breakdown the structure of the essay and its already working.

I had the chance to speak to kathy today. I gave her a recap about what Rosa said in the meeting yesterday. Kathy told me that she thinks my piece, Little Loud, shares the same title as as a play but i mentioned that I am prepared to change the title title if I had to. After running a quick search I found the name has been sued in many places so I will have to keep a change of title in mind.
I also mentioned that I want to find and art style to conform to. She offered to help me find a visual style so hopefully she is able to come up with something. Kathy told me she thought the show would work well in 2D and so did I but I made it clear the reason I would want to avoid the 2D is simply because we dont have enough good 2D animators to execute the show to a high enough standard and my strength lies in 3D CGI as that is where I have put most of my time.
Kathy, like Rosa did encourage me to think about producing another projects and seems to see me in the producing light. It would also be very good for me to be able to produce 3D CGI, 2D and Stop Motion.
Kathy encouraged me to move back to research and story so I can move forward. In ehr head she said she saw a 2D style when I told her. She said  look into the UPA films much like Gerald McBoing Boing and other works. I like the style but I don't know if its right for this project. I also looked into what is currently on BBC as she advised me to aim for that demographic shows. These are the shows categorised as animation currently on CBBC.

I was reading Broadcast magazine in the library an today and there was an interview with Kay Benbow the CBeebies Controller. Although that is not my aim I need to be more aware of that the successful shows are in case the producers ask me at the pitches.
Successful shows this year:
Andy's Wild Adventures
Tree Fu Tom (re-commissioned for a 2nd series. Its the highest grossing show on the channel.)

Little Loud: Story & Visual Development

Today was our first session with Rosa, I was a little late to the first lecture because of traffic in Penryn, we watched all of the 3rd year shorts. Later in the day I pitched my idea to Rosa and several other son the course today. She said I had a strong idea which I was grateful for. She sais she was excited by the idea but when I said I was setting it in her bedroom she felt a little let down. She wants me to open up the story and incorporate the rest of the house as the bedroom is too much of a constraint and that there is potential for a bigger adventure. As I mentioned in a previous post the reason I am keeping these things simple is because of the time, scope, skill set and being realistic with man power when it comes to crunch time as people will drop out I am 100% sure of this based on past experiences. I am going to spend friday - sunday working up a script using the house for monday morning to run by our lecturers.

In terms of visual development I am trying to steer Heidi and Phoebe away from the gothic direction and more towards the cute and cuddly world with a dark twist (she shadow). It needs to feel like a world of full of supernatural elements beneath the veil of a beautiful place you would love to live.

Its is also very tricky trying to design characters, props, environments when you do now have a story and I can sense the frustration of my team as they ask me questions when I do not even have my
The pro-production process needs to be extremely well thought out as in my opinion it is the mother of all cock- ups in animation production. So for now I need a solid story before I can commit to helping the other with the visual development of the story.

Tomorrow, Friday, we are off all day but I will working on my story for half of the day and my dissertation the other half.

Little Loud: Ideas & Development

Script, Character bios,

Last night I was working on character bios so below are the three main characters. These are subject to change over the coming weeks and the names are far rom final. Only the main character called 'Little' for now will be the 3 minute pilot.

Little:



Ryan:

___

When I went into the studio this morning my aims were:
1) test the workflow for shadows
2) test the workflow for normals maps (this is how I plan to get most of my detail)
3) get used to the stereoscopic controls in maya

White I was working on the shadows, which I left till last, Georg came over and gave me a hand. The method I has been using was extremely complicated and involved using light-linking, attribute spread sheet and getting deep into layers (see figure 1). While Georg was able to do the same thing in under 30 seconds (see figure 2 to 4) using the render stats menue.

George gave some good advice and feedback on the project. The main thing he wanted to get across was not limiting your idea because of your current skill set and that everything can be learnt and tested. I admire that but its easier said than done because after 1st and 2nd year its easy to write an idea and then ask yourself how will I do that? He in encouraging us to think about

Figure 1: My first test with a Sphere and Cone 

Figure 2: Sphere and Cone with shadows.

Figure 3: Sphere with cast shadows "off". Cone with visibility "off" but cast shadows "on'.

Figure 4: Sphere and Cone with same setting as above. Cone moves to same base position as Sphere. 

Andy Advice & Feedback:

Characters

Several storylines