Final Project!

My roles for this project so far are:

-colour consultant and art director
-co-writer
-storyboard assistant
-3D modeller (China and England)

My future roles will be:

-Animator (sections still to be allocated)
-Explore rendering options
-Texturing (including UV unwrap)
-Titles and credits animation

My immediate tasks include finishing the models for China and England, rigging and weighting them. I also have to research blend shapes and rendering options.
I want to do a more detailed animatic of the opening sequence so I can start the credits and titles.
We are all currently in the process of doing some final tweaking the story, as we wish to take on board some of Kevin Geiger's ideas and advice.

Overall I want to strengthen my skills as 3D animator, and apply my experience in graphic design to this project.

Haven't updated for a little while! Been busy with CGI project and Business and Policy! We had our major presentation... and it went ok. We're a bit off schedule but luckily we have the holidays to pick up the slack a bit. I also want to help out with the props and colour scheme a lot during the break. We're missing a sense of style and I hope to get that coming across by the end of the holidays. Andi showed us a past student's short film (Tough Guy), and it was 3d but rendered to look cell shaded with outlines. That would be nice if we could figure out how to do it!

I've nearly finished modelling China but still not happy with it. I'll go back and edit him I think. Here is what I have so far:



I also made an inspiration splash screen for our power point, which I think captures the kitschy, retro quality of our film. It's based on sci-fi movie posters and book covers from the 50s.

I did some inspirational landscape pictures. I realised there aren't really any concept pieces in colour that I felt was punchy or conveyed the cartoony/sci-fi element we are aiming for.

Our story has evolved to a slightly different angle. Now, instead of having the alien blow up the door, we have him work out the door after humiliating himself by trying all different techniques to open the door (breath analysis/retina scan/fingerprint i.d). He accidently turns the door handle in desperation and finds a corridor. He walks down it and is worried when he sees ANOTHER set of doors, but is relieved when they open for him. It turns out to be an elevator. He stands there waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. It gets really awkward, and a long pause ensues before he notices the 'up' button. He presses it and breathes a sigh of relief as the elevator ascends, but is annoyed when it breaks down. The final straw is when he gets back into his spaceship, it fails to start and makes a sound like a Datsun Sunny on a cold morning.

I like the new ending because it has a more subtle humour to it than our previous, 'let's just explode the base', but I worry that it's not enough to get people laughing. I think one more joke in the corridor would be funny, to me it seems to easy to just have the doors open for him. I don't know though.

Kerrie and I redid the ending on the storyboards and got rid of the guards (which we have decided aren't necessary now that the explosion has been taken out).

Here is a picture of the old storyboard, anyway:

We had our mid-semester presentation this week and I made the powerpoint and organised everything together so we could present a cohesive and hopefully accurate account of where we are at with our project. It's hard when our plan doesn't go exactly right everything needs to be reshuffled. Like if I have an essay due one week and I have to put the major project on the backburner things can get a bit stressful. Having said that, I'm happy with where we are at so far.

Putting it all together gave me a clear view of where we are at and what needs to be done. So far we have:

Enough concept sketches
A fifth or sixth draft script (which I think made need more adjustments)
All character designs
Some colour concepts (we need more)
Storyboards (an ongoing process)
The main character's head modelled in 3D.

Our script has changed a little bit since the first draft, and we have decided to do some storyboards so we can get started on the animatic and get that all done by the end of the semester, as well as having something to show in week 8 presentations.

New Script (after consultation with Mark Upton):

New Script.

Our script involves a sweeping shot of a desert landscape (like Area 51) and then an establishing shot of a military base and a space ship. So I did some space ship concepts!

It was my job this week to come up with character designs for the representatives of China and England. I based them loosely on Mao and Churchill, but I also had to keep in mind the cartoony style we were aiming for, as well as simplicity. I came up with:


This is my final character sheet for England.

Also:


These were my concepts for China, which Rachael turned into:

Over the holidays Kerrie and I worked on the first draft script. It's not really the first draft I guess because we've all typed up rough drafts before this one, but it's the first 'official' script with proper formating and everything!

We went through a few goes before settling with this version. We were worried that the alien was getting too aggressive and dangerous, and we want to keep this light hearted. Andi mentioned that we should research the word 'hubris'.

hu·bris
–noun
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.



So that's where we decided to go with the script. Kerrie and I also introduced some new characters - the guards. We were worried about animating an explosion. It seemed too much work and we thought it might be funnier if you saw how the explosion affected the guards, in a sort of Warner Bros. inspired build up to explosion, cut away, BOOM, the guards are singed and their sunglasses are knocked off but they remain expressionless and passive.

We also wanted to make the world leaders a bit critical. We thought... if the audience can see the alien is full of himself, they'll wonder why the world leaders don't think the same?

Here is a link to the first draft:

First Draft

Been revising the story this week trying to get it ironed out a bit. I'm not sure about the explosion taking place at the end and think maybe a more subtle way to humiliate the alien would work better. Like maybe instead of blowing up the door, he stands there for ages trying to work it out and someone pushes through from the other side and like whacks him out of the way. We still have time to get it worked out though, I think Rachael has made a very rough script plan, and Kerrie and I will start the first draft script in the holidays.

I want the look of this film to be inspired by the cold war era/60s propaganda. I researched some of the world leaders of the time and found some interesting character inspirations.



De Gaulle



Churchill



Mao



Stalin

I've been trying to think of who would sit where. I think I've worked out that England would be first, and would be happy to sit next to America. Then France would sit between those two countries and China and Russia. I can't see America wanting to sit next to the communists, haha.