Thursday, 4 November 2010

Orignal Intro

My name is Mike Lawrence and I am using this blog as a means to help myself keep track of all the research, preparation work, and execution for my final year project. Here I will be posting images and videos that inspire me, mood boards, character and set designs, expression sheets, and finally the animatic and final animation.

The project itself is a 2D animation pitch for a music video, based around the song Re Your Brains by musician and song writer Jonathan Coulton. The idea is to create material that aims to generate interest from other animators in order to recruit them into being involved with the final colour animation. I will be putting together myself the character designs, set designs, prop designs, a black and white animatic for the entire length of the cartoon, and twenty five particular seconds of completed final animation to demonstrate what the finished result could look like with a team’s involvement.

The cartoon itself will provide animation to compliments the entire edited song, consisting of two minutes and twenty five seconds cut down from the initial four minute original. The animation like the song is about a struggling office worker who is approached by his boss, now turned zombie. His boss Bob wants to kill/eat him, but in a professional way. It will contain three main characters, as well as a handful of interchangeable zombie designs multiplied many times to create the illusion of crowds.

I will be using animation and art software, Abobe Flash, and Photoshop respectively, all rough work will be drawn out using traditional methods of pencil, paper and light box before being cleaned up with for mentioned digital programs. There will be efficient amounts of research into different art styles and animation techniques, referencing old material for inspiration and to learn new skills. My objectives are to overall improve my skills in many different fields’ e.g. 2D effects, parallax scrolling on multilayer giving a 3D effect, character animation, background and character art, facial expressions, and develop an appropriate new style that stands out and looks completely different to anything I have ever done before.

Finally copyright violations is not a concern. On his official website Jonathan when asked if his music can be used in a student project, responded in the FAQ section:

"Yes please. And I would love to see/hear it. All my music is released under an Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons license that allows any kind of non-commercial re-use provided you: 1) credit me and link to this site, and 2) don’t use it to make money (this does not apply to songs with material that I don’t own, like covers and mashups and remixes). Really, no need to ask permission, just go make that thing. If you want to know more about how Creative Commons works, check out the site."

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