Pitch

Well my pitch had been delivered and i feel i done fairly well. I was really nervous but feel i got my message across to people. I was a little annoyed when none of my teachers gave me any feed back, they just said 'Thank you Karen' and that was it. That made me worry, everyone else before me had some sort of feedback weather positive or negative, we weren't in a rush or anything so i was really confused. Worrying myself silly, when there was a break i had to up to the teachers and asked why they hasn't said anything. I was reassured by Dan when he said that i had ticked all the boxes i needed to and how he thought he idea was really good because i was bringing a panda to life. Mike apologized for not giving me feedback, he just said that he wanted to get the process moving and that i would get a feedback form. I still was not quite happy about what Mike had told me but Dan made me feel a lot better about the animation.

As for other groups, there was some really interesting ideas which i could see myself working on. There was Matt's presentation for this animation called 'Smitten', which is a 2D musical. Now i don't really do musicals but with the way he expressed himself about his idea, i could really set the scene, he also had an animatic which was done to a high standard. I think he will be one of the ideas to get the green light.
I also liked Michelle Vinnals 2D animation as well as Tom Richie's 2D. I seem to be picking all 2D ideas, which is a little unusual for me as my strongest skills are within 3D, but it can't say that i cant have a change of pace for a change.
My last idea i really enjoyed was Andrew Kinnear with his 3D animation called 'The Deep'. His idea is quite original to other pitches that were presented. He had a good story line as well as strong concept art which gave me a good understanding of the style and visualization for his idea. With all that i have mentioned, i think they all stand a good chance of being chosen. I just hope i will be amongst the gang.

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard i have been working on to give people a better idea on trying to imagine my animation short. I have not been able to complete this though due to lack of imagination when it comes to camera angles, i also did not finish the storyboard, as i started it a little too late and there would be endless amount of frames which may just put the audience off. My short is set at night in the tent which i have a concept piece on. I done this to try and set the scene for the audience to know that she was out in her back garden or even some kind of woods.

Character designs

Pandy

Here are the designs of my characters. Pandy is a very small creature, who is very mischievous but ever so cute looking, so whenever you Summer (the little girl) looks at him, she can't help but forgive him straight away. He has references to a panda through his colour design and round patches around his eyes. On top of his head you can see a flower, now, depending on his mood, the flower can grow. So when he is excited and happy the flower blossoms, but when he feels sad and lonely the flower closes up.

Summer

Summer is between 3/4 years old. She is a loving girl who likes to do things on her own as if she is all grown up. Playing with Pandy is what makes her most happy, he is important to her, they do everything together and have a very close friendship. Summer loves to draw and be in the garden as she likes to day dream up at the sunny sky.

Concept art

Here i have done some concept art in which i can show when doing the presentation. The first image is off the tree house. The tree house wouldn't be in place for all that long, but i thought it could be a place where you can see a little of herself and the types of things she likes, almost as if it is her second home in a way. The main point to the tree house is for near the ending, the last place she thinks to look for her pet.

Here is the little girls tree house, the main thing she likes to do here is to draw and stick them up on the wall. She has some draws which are filled with toys and she uses them to reach the wall so that she stick her drawings up. She also mainly plays with her pet or hides in when she gets in trouble. The tree house was made by her dad so pieces of wood are placed everywhere as he isn't really one for building.

With the colours, i wanted them to be really warm as the animation is on a nice sunny day. You should be able to see a light beam which is the only sauce of light she has as she is not allowed to go up there at night.

The tent is where the animation will begin, as the little girl and her pet are camping out for the night. The little girl likes to think she is a grown up by being alone in the dark. She has a little lantern which she reads with and has her pet to play with.

I was a little unsure of the colours for this, so this is not a final but you can see the message i am trying to send.

Props

Now that i have researched into colours, i can start thinking about the types of props i would need for my animation.

Here i was just drawing the types of toys a young girl would have, i want her to have some learning toys as well as playful ones to show intelligence.
Now with the animation, i needed to think of the things that the girl could look around in the garden to try and find her pet, i haven't figured out if she comes from a rich or poor family. I don't want the family to be wealthy rich where they throw there money onto anything but i do want the audience to know that her parents love her and try to make her as happy as she can without being spoiled. I am imaging the garden to be fairly big, or as what across as big to the audience through the camera angles from the little girl. I want to try and her it from her perspective, so everything would seem fairly big. In the image above, they are the most common types of things you would see in a garden.

Colour

Even though i haven't started any environment sketches just yet, i already know the type of colours i want to use for my animation. For the environments, i was thinking of using, greens, blues, browns and yellows. This is mainly because they are outdoor colours, they relate to nature, the shy, and different types of wood work, like a shed or tree house. They are also bright and colourful which will catch the audiences attention.

Why main reason for picking yellow was so that i could use it for a sandpit, possibly the sun, or the light from the sun. I can also use elements of yellow on the girl as i was thinking that she could be wearing a fushia dress and yellow would be the complementary colour for that.

As you can all guess green will be used for the green, trees and pretty much everything else to do with nature.
Brown is mainly to be used for any type of wood work within the garden, so there should hopefully not be to much of it to darken the animation. This will give the animation more of a balance.
Blue is going to be for the sky, and i intend to have the sky in the background quite a lot as from looking from a child's perspective, they are short, so they would see a lot of the sky.

As for the little girl, at first i was thinking that she could have blonde (yellow) hair, but as i am using this as one of my background colours, i don't want her to clash within the background. So i am thinking that black hair would be best as she would then stand out from the background which will make her more noticed. As i said eariler, i was thinking that her dress could be between pink and purple, with elements of yellow.


Also, if the girl is going to wear a dress, i thought that long socks would go well. So with that in mind, having stripey socks would look cuter as they are more childish. So i thought a few brights colours for them will give her something else to make her stand out.

Changes

Well since i was last on here, i have decided to change some things due to little experiments. Below are some rough sketchs i have started on. As i had spoken about eariler, i was going to have a little boy as my main character but when actually drawing him i did not how he was coming out. The main problem i was having was on the hair, how do most young boys have there hair and if it was to be short, how would i be able to model this successfully. I all of a sudden thought, why couldn't the character be a girl? There's no problem in that, and i could portray her as a really cute little girl. Where as with a boy, you normally tend to think of them as little brats. Plus designing her hair would be easier as you have more choice.
Here i was mainly trying to figure out the weight and height of the boy. I was finding it a little hard to get the boy to look young, i always thought he came across around 6/7. The main thing which was giving it away was his clothes.
When starting to draw a girl, it looked very similar to Boo from Monsters Inc, mainly because of her hair style.


Here i carried drawing a girl, but again she looked like Boo, i couldn't seem to get her out of my mind. So i thought i would stop and try to draw her pet. Here i was experimenting with a few things, I was mixing different animals together to see the type of thing i would get. With the bobble on the top of its head, that is from a creature of a video game called Final Fantasy.
The main reason why i picked Boo as my main inspiration is through her big eyes and how she never really talks, but she always gets her message across through her reactions, which is just what i am looking to try and do. Her clothing is not very girly but through her hair style and eyes you would never know because you mainly focus on her face.

I also looked into other children such as:






I've had to start thinking about girls names and the kind of clothing that she could wear. Before i was thinking that i could have the boy wearing dungarees, so i thought, why not have a similar thing with the girl? But maybe she could be wearing a dress version of dungarees.
Girls names that i have had in mind are: Ava, Lucy, Ella and Summer.

Research

As my short is mainly situated in a back garden, i need some images to start helping me with my environment and the type of props i will need inside.

Kinds of things you may see in a garden:
Tree house
Climbing frame
Slide
Sand pit
Swing
Table and chairs
Plants
Wooden fence
Shed
Back of the house

Childrens toys:
Bike
Ball
Cuddly toys
Train
Crayons
Figures

Here are some images i have gathered up which will help me to plan out what my back garden should look like. I also need to think about if this child is spoilt with all the toys he could wish for, or use more of the surroundings of the garden to capture the boys imagination.





Here are some different type of trees, some look friendlier than others as i need to think about what sort of theme the short should be. I could have a more dark and gloomy feel to the animation which would have scary looking trees, or i could have a bright and colourful surrounding which would have friendly looking trees, filled with leaves which has a healthy glow.

Story Spline

To help me figure out my story plot i have a little template guideline which i got from a two day Pixar class which i went to earlier this year.

The Story Spline!

Once upon a time:
And everyday:
Until one day:
And because of that:
And because of that:
And because of that:
Until finally:
And since that day:
And the moral of the story is:

My version is:
Once upon a time, there was a boy and his pet.
And everyday, they liked to camp out in the back garden.
Until one day, the pet went missing.
And because of that, the boy went looking for his pet.
And because of that, the boy was scared and alone when in the forest.
And because of that, the boy hurt himself when he fell over.
Until finally: he found his pet playing with the butterfly
And since that day, they decided to sleep in there bedroom at night
And the moral of the story is, you should always ask a grown up for help when scared or in trouble.

This helps me to go deeper into my story as this is just an outline for what can happen at each stage of the story.

The beginning!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my BA Animation page. Here you will be able to see my starting point of creation for the animation short, that i am thinking of designing for final year of Ravensbourne university, all the way until the final piece. This will be running through out the university year, which is about nine months, so make sure you keep up to date to see the development.

So, at the moment everyone in my class needs to make a presentation pitch in front of the class with our ideas for what we want to create. But, Only so many ideas will actually get chosen, so i need to do the best i can to see if i can be the project leader for my short.

My initial story plan is about a boy and his pet who are camping out in there back garden for the night. Everything is fine until the early morning where a butterfly comes into the tent and lands the pets nose waking him up, once he does hes amazed by the colours of the butterfly. The butterfly flies off and the pet follows into the large garden, which has a section which is like a forest which the pets runs into. The young boy wakes up to find his pet gone and starts a hunt to try and find him, but where has he gone? Is he in trouble?

This is the rough idea so far, there is still a lot i need to figure out during the next week but i can confident that i will figure this out in time.

I was thinking that the boy could be aged around four years old and his actions could speak louder than words as he would not have fluent speech. The sorts of names i had in mind are: Joseph, Benjamin, Joshua or Samuel.

I thought that the pet could be fairly small and round, to make him look a little cuter, but i do need to bare in mind that this could make him harder to animate as i have experienced this in the past with my last project, so maybe the pets main way of movement could be by rolling?
Names i had in mind for the pet are: Kite, Vivi, Sora, Aqua and Rin.