My Pitch!

Well, I managed to complete my animatic in time for the pitch! There were parts that I had to leave out or leave a little unfinished because I wanted content over detail, but overall I am extremely proud of my efforts. Here are the storyboards that depict the shots in the animatic. When the animatic is uploaded, I will post that here too. It's a big file, so I'm having trouble getting it on the net.

Cool creepy adverts! A must see!

You remember that game called "Alan Wake" that I used as research not long ago?

Well cheeck out this amazingly clever adverts, using light to sell an idea.



Clearly here, the poster is placed on a building where it can match the way the sun rises and sets. It's basically a sun dial. It also suggests that when the sun sets, you will die. Very creepy!

This advert is clever. A light surrounded by a casing that controls its direction is placed at the bottom of the poster. At night, the light turns on. The light glows on to the poster, and creates the shape of a coffin! CREEEEEPY

Again, this is an example of clever lighting, used in a way to send out a message to an audience. People forget how useful lighting can be, and I want to make sure that I try and use it in interesting ways for my work.

Progress with pitch so far...

Okay, well I think I'm roughly under half way through my animatic, which is pretty good, but I still have a fair bit to do. I've been editing it in Final Cut Pro, which hasn't been as difficult as I thought it would.

I was fortunate enough to come up with a few ideas for my girl character whilst at the Gym today. I was watching the tv thats inbuilt into some of the machines. As I was watching the Gymnastics on channel 2, I realized that this would be a great skill for my girl character to have to rival the monster's strength. Her dexterity and agility would definitely be good enough to concur the monster.





It may be tough to animate, but it would certainly add a spark to the girl's character.

I also originally had the girl use a yoyo as a weapon, but I was inspired to change this weapon to a skipping rope. It is a lot more girly, and would probably pack more punch.

Coincidence?

My monster character is starting to suspiciously resemble an existing character many people know already:

Toothless from "How To Train A Dragon"???

What do you think? I'm kinda not worried about the close resemblance. I like to think that I am unconsciously inspired by that film. It is absolutely awesome, and features many lizardy friends who would provide some excellent research for my work. My monster is the evil version of Toothless, minus the wings and plus the weird glowing tattoos.

Anyway, above is a mini preview of one of my animatic/storyboard shots.

I've been working hard on a few of the scenes for my story. I'm trying lots of different things out., including camera angles and shots. I've also tried to be flexible when posing my characters. I tend to sometimes restrict my drawings to being rather flat, but I feel I have done well to avoid this.

As far as the victim is concerned, I have done a couple of sketches that I'm not altogether happy with, which I will upload soon.

Character Design - Brat

For my monster's "victim", I initially thought of having a standard little boy character. But now, since I'm going to have two "little monsters" in my short film, I will need to deliberate again about how to alter the look of my child character.

This time, he or she is going to be rather spoilt and mean. I am now erring on the side of creating a character not too dissimilar to Angelica from "Rugrats", or Darla Dimple from "Cats Don't Dance"

Komodo dragon footage

They are a force to be reckoned with! I found out quite a lot of info from these videos, both visually and factually.

Ideas Storyboarded

Hey there!

Here's some written and sketched ideas I came up with for you to see. I'm sorry about the quality of the images and the missing annotations, the scanner kept messing up. I'll retype anything that is missing.

Ideas Brainstorming

Idea 1

(Boy lets Monster keep toy)

Idea 2

Idea 3

(Boy is greedy and monster is sad)

Idea 4

(Child leaps out of cupboard and fights monster away)

Idea 5

I had a nice meeting with some people in my class who have been interested in being group mates (Michelle Vinall, Steve Pender, Clym Smith, and Fahran Younas). I showed them these ideas and they warmed to idea 3 and 4.

I am thinking of combining the two ideas into one.

I also think that it would be funnier if the child that fights the monster away is a girl instead of a boy. So I'll need to do some new drawings to come up with a good girl character.