Hello and welcome. Been awhile since my last post, but im back with more stuff, here's a sample.
Been back at university for about 2 weeks now and Im very enthusiastic on whats going on. The first week was an intense 4 day project where we worked with the Ma creative writing course to create a short anamatic, here's what we came up within in team:
Essentially, the project was primarily created to get us all used to working under conditions comparable to whats found in the industry. I personally found the project enjoyable and worth while and gained a valuable set of experiences out it. Bellow is a evaluation of the project if you would like to know abit more.
Collaborative Writing Project
Evaluation
Initially the creative writing project started off being very different to the final outcome. Several ideas were put forward by the rest of the group ranging from the concept of a line up of fairly tale villains to the idea of snow white being influenced by drugs whist being around seven tare away dwarfs.
Eventually the idea finally agreed on was the concept of a 1950’s public information video explaining the dangers and need to know facts of the “enchanted Forest”. Initially it was also agreed on that the project would also take on the look and visual styles of 1950’s advertisements.
The overall foundation to the story would be that a narrator would talk about the forest, whilst Timmy (lead character) would lead the way through the story by travelling in the forest scene by scene encountering different mythical characters and settings.
As far as characters go, the narrator was going to be an American public servant; typical of similar ones found in videos broadcasted during the 1950’s and 60’s about atomic war or everyday life. In addition the narrating American would address a little boy called Timmy, which would act as the incident, somewhat naive lead character that would act as the audience’s icon to relate to.
My personal role in this project was the storyboard artist, so most of my responsibilities were primarily at the start of the project, where I and the animation director came up with the basis of what all the camera angles would be, along with translating any stage directions in to visual cues.
I found that my role in the project did change, towards the later stages of the project. For instance I still had to redo the storyboard through the project to accommodate any technical changes and found myself helping out with any art direction problems faced by the animation director. Looking back, being the storyboard artist gave me allot of freedom to develop the look of the animation and being in constant contact with the rest of the team meant that I could help direct certain areas of the project.
I felt that by coming from a drawing background, the storyboard artist role did suit some of my characteristics, but would have preferred more control over the project. As far as working with the rest of the team goes, I feel as though we all worked very well together. Constant communication is always key in making sure things go smoothly and luckily the team had that. Also, there was always a clear set of objectives one had to achieve, there was a bit of uncertainty a few times but other than that everyone pulled together and worked confidently and consistently.
Unfortunately the only aspect of the project that didn’t feel as though it worked was working with the writers. Initially it went well, but by the second day, we lost one of the writers to an illness, who acted as the director of the writing team. Furthermore miss-communication became more and more prominent. Now this could have been for a verity of reasons, but effects of this meant that the script was always loose idea and never a reference point to work from. Personally I’d like to try it again, but with addition of more time.
What I take away from this project is the experience of what it could be like in the industry, where fast deadlines and unclear objectives are common place and that to succeed in such an environment, one must be calm, clear and vocal on what he or she has to do.
Thanks again, be posting again soon
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