P3: TITLE - DEVELOP CONCEPT IDEAS AND SEQUENCE FOR AN ANIMATION TO MEET A CLIENT BRIEF
Concepts
Concepts: Choose brief: 3 mental health Choose distribution: Social media (Facebook, twitter) and perhaps to be shown on TV add breaks on stations such as MTV (stations that appeal to the teen audience)
At first I found it hard to gather up story ideas and concept so to overocome this I decided to do some research around mental health animations and gather up an idea of what products are already out there and what made a mental health animation successful.
Examples of Mental health videos animations I found in my research:
I then decided to look up the most common mental health problems that Teenagers and young adults face as 'must be relevant for Teen audiences' was a clear specification on the client brief and this is what I listed :
Potential dilemmas for animation: (must be relevant for Teen audiences ) -Stress -Anxiety -the effects of failure -Lack of motivation -depression -insecurity
Then i decided to do some character research and thought about what kinds of characters would work well in a short animation and these were my original thoughts on the types of character I should include:
Characters: -Animal characters are visually appealing - having a support such as a friend or a sibling to make it relatable - distinctive features of the characters such as colour and facial features make it more recognisable and therefor marketable
After this I then narrowed it down to species and type of character that would work best in the animation.
Animals that would be most relatable for plot or audience : -Dog- cute , recognisable, pack animal, people have close relationships with pet dogs -Bird - symbolism of flight and song, group animals, sense of moving and adventure -fish - live in groups, could explore individuality , different parts of the ocean representing moods -human- relatable, easy to empathise with.
CONCEPTS After my research I then generated 3 different rough story line concepts to chose from each of them focussing on a different issue and exploring a different type of character .
Idea 1: stress Equilibrium- Teenager is walking down the hall with his school rucksack Disruption- As he walks down the hall people keep chucking and putting more and more books in his bag (representing different stresses in the teens life) Recognition- The teenager stuggles with his bag and then falls over due to the weight Repair- Another teenager lends him a hand up New Equilibrium- they share the load and walk off in the same direction
Idea 2 : Anxiety/insecurity Equilibrium- a group fish are swimming and new fish come to join Disruption- one of the new fish is struggling with a disabled fin Recognition- all the old fish stop to look at him and the fish feels bad Repair- The fish all slow slightly to his speed New Equilibrium- They all swim along as if nothing happened
Idea 3 : failure/motivation and depression Equilibrium- birds are flying past the camera in a montage. gradually we see one bird getting saddder and finding it hard to fly Disruption- the bird starts to fall Recognition- his friend notices this Repair- his friend catches him and takes him to a safe branch Disruption- the bird wont eat Recognition- his friend is worried Repair- the bird sees his friend and tries to eat New Equilibrium- the bird eats
Final Story Concept: I chose to take Idea 3 forward to make an animation. I chose this Idea because I feel it has the most potential to connect to the audience as it is a topic that is applicable to most people . Also I feel like it is within my artistic capabilities to create the animation and that I will feasibly be able to create within the time scale.
To further develop my final story concept I created a final scene by scene breakdown to help myself picture what the overall film would like
Scene by scene breakdown;
Scene 1: A flock of birds are flying. Bird B flys past and waits for Bird A. Bird a happily catches up. this scene repeats twice bith times the bird B gets more worried and Bird A gets sadder and slower each time until they start to fall. Also the saturation in the scene decreases to black and white to reflect the birds mood.
Scene 2: Set on a branch. Bird A is asleep and Bird B goes to give him food but Bird A refuses. This happens a couple of times and the food piles up until bird B gets really worried and starts to cry. Bird B notices and then tries to eat. He eats and both characters are happy.
Character concepts : For my characters I am considering animating them in 2D digital line drawn l animation, so I will be digitally drawing and animating them.
I then researched and created a mood board around 2D cartoon birds to gather ideas towards style and how to different angles of 2D birds:
Character Concept art
After the Mood board I started on hand drawn concept art to gather further develop my own style and see what my capabilities and limitations were artistically character wise:
Digital Concept Art
After Hand drawing concept art I then took my designs and created my two main characters and digitally drew their final outlines into computer and experimented with colour until I found the right colours for the characters:
Final Characters
These are the two designs that I found most visually appealing and that I will use in the final animation.
Environment Concepts
The environments that will need to be designed for the final animation are :
A sky
A Tree branch
I started off by once again creating a mood board of 2D cartoon skies and trees so I could gather up an idea of how to draw and design a set that would match the style of animation seen in the characters. Mood Board:
Environment Concept Art
After the Mood board I started on hand drawn concept art to see what my capabilities and limitations were artistically setting wise and to also try and see how I could find a way to draw a setting that would blend nicely with the character drawings :
Digital Concept Art
After Hand drawing concept art I then took my designs and digitally drew their final outlines into computer and experimented with colour and texture until I found the right colours and textures for the environment:
Final Environment
These are the designs that I thought would work best with the final character designs
Running Time
The Running time of my animation should be at about 1 minute 40 seconds. This is including credits and all content . I feel this is a adequate running time as the client brief states that it must be at least a minute long and it fits this. I chose to go over the minute because I felt that in order to tell the story correctly and fully it needed to be longer then a minute. Break Down of the 01:40- 00:00 - 00:08 Title Sequence 00:08 - 01:30 Animation 01:30 - 01:40 End credits
Clearly identified target audience
This is a mood board of the target audience I am appealing to:
My target audience would be teens aged between 15-17 year olds and mainly female, my animation would appeal to them because my animation will have varying colour intensity to create a pathetic fallacy and capture the audiences attention. It would also appeal to them because the main characters are birds which means it is fairly different from most metal health videos and the characters will be recognisable. It will appeal mainly to this audience because the character has very human emotions and would change facial expressions as a human would.
P4: TITLE - CREATE A PRE-PRODUCTION PLAN FOR THE ANIMATION
Script
risk assesment
In my risk assessment I have made sure that all of the risks stated are realistic that could potentially happen during production.
Production Schedule
Detailed Final Character & Environment Drawings
This is a gallery of images that will all appear in the finished animation. Some I have edited as if it was a final shot and some I have, this is because I will be making the final animation by layering individual clips and layering over one another, so some you shall see the layers and editing styles I hope to place on the layers and some are just individual single layers with no effects placed on them.
Animation Tests
These are my first attempts at making separate layers of animation ready to be layered on top of eachother
This next video is my first attempt at placing layers over the top eachother and adding some effects such as keying, resizing and blurring.
Story board
Budget considerations
Designer- Free ( I am doing it myself) Animator-Free ( I am doing it myself) Editing team-Free ( I am doing it myself) Equipment-Free ( I am doing it myself) Location- Studio classroom at school. Free space to use. Equipment- Free ( I own the laptop and I am allowed to borrow a sketch pad free of charge from the school photography department) Software- Already owned by myself.
All budget considerations taken into account I believe the film will be extremely cheap to produce as I will only be using resources and locations already available to myself. I am also not doing any form of animation that requires props or or physical materials ( e.g clay or plastic) and by doing so it means I don't require to buy any extra materials, keeping my budget as close to 0 as possible.