Second Group Meeting and Action Plan

Last week I was absent from college, so this blog post will be about what the rest of my group did and what I've had to catch up on.


They did a proposal of a developed idea, which starts off showing the quote that my animation was based on "The World is a book, and those who do not travel only read one page"- St Augustine. Kelly's idea then comes into place with a shot of a stomach and sperm travelling to the belly button with the quote merging from the sperm. The sperm then travels from the stomach and a scrapbook appears with images of parts of life. The pages of the scrap book then animate and a person's life is shown through the animation scrapbook.


The group then made an action plan with jobs for me on it too. The jobs that I have been allocated are:

• Create character profiles with set/character drawings
• Trial a short animation with drawings
• Collect foley sounds
• Create background drawings
• Animate turning pages in the scrapbook sequence
• Animate the growing up sequence
• Make the website
• Finally, to edit the animation

These jobs I have looked over and agreed that I'm happy to do them. 

To create character profiles I will have to take into account the character at different times in their lives and other characters that they may find along the way. I think that the way to develop the character easiest will be to develop their personality through writing their profile, and then develop their looks from that.

Drawing the set will mean that we will first have to come up with a definite storyline, with a beginning, middle, end and small story lines along the way. 

Collecting foley is something that I have to do with Jack. This will be a big element of our animation, as this will be the main source of sound.

Forming Groups and First Meeting

Before, we decided to expand our individual ideas even more by merging into a group. This would enable us to view others ideas in the group, join with people who were working in the same medium as ourselves and develop our ideas to their full potential.
I'm now in a group with Jack, Blair and Kelly. The four of us decided that this was a good idea, because all our ideas were based around life and growing up. Whether it be life growing and evolving, or looking back on how life has been, we all knew that we wanted our end result to be about living and making the most of life. Another thing that made it obvious that we should all be in a group together was that all four of us wanted some form of animation in our projects. Although some wanted After Effects and Flash animation and others wanted stop motion animation, we managed to work our way around this.


In a meeting we had once we were in our group, we discussed a final idea for our piece. Because we had previously realised that our ideas were all very similar, we discussed the possibility of bringing together the most developed elements of each of our ideas and making them into one strong animated piece.


Throughout the meeting we kept coming back to a part of my original idea, with there being a scrap book in the animation. This was a part of my idea that the rest of the group decided they liked and also wanted to include.


Another element that we noticed our ideas had in common was travelling. With my idea involving travelling the most, and the others had the idea of life travelling or travelling with life.


At the end of the meeting we managed to merge all our our ideas together to create the following: A story of an old man looking back on the good memories of his life through a scrapbook. At this stage we wanted to involve parts of the human body to animate on too. This idea involved all of our ideas, with mine being the scrapbook, Blairs idea being the man looking back on his life, Kelly's using the human body, and Jack's being that the medium was animation.


I'm pleased with the initial idea and think that we managed to merge our ideas together well, making a story that will make sense with elements from each of us.

'Five Wonders'

Following on from my last blog post, here I am explaining what will happen when my character visits the different countries and cities.


In Britain, it seems that when thinking of China, you automatically think of the food, and the Chinese New Year is something that is picked up on in Britain too. I think that a New Year would be a great first location for my animation to start and for the saying of 'New Year new me', which a lot of people believe in. As my character is finding herself growing up, this would be a good connotation and hint to what will happen in the story. 'People will pour out their money to buy presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly cleanse the house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for good incoming luck.' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year] This I think, makes a good starting point for my characters journey and again, will be a good connotation for her sweeping away ill fortune and starting a life travelling round the world. Something else that I could include in the China scene is chinese lanterns, which are featured in the film Tangled. These lanterns could signify and represent her letting go of her bad life and starting a fresh. In Tangled, I think that the lanterns make the scene really pretty, colourful and this sort of idea could work in my animation if done right.

Christ the Redeemer, which is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is said to be the 5th largest Art Deco statue of Jesus Christ in the world, symbolizing Brazils Christianity. Rio boasts the world famous festival, known simply as 'The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro'. It's held before lent every year before lent and has over 2 million people rush and parade through the streets per day. The carnival is all about fun, where people dance sing and parade through the streets dressed in bright colours and fancy dress. This could be the part of the story where she finds herself moving to the next country sooner than she thought because of her trouble fitting in in Jordan, and the carnival lifts her spirits and makes her happy and prepared for the rest of her journey. The picture below shows the imensity of the crowds and the bright and colourful atmosphere, which again, I will use in my scrapbook animation.

Her next destination will be to the Taj Mahal in India. India reminds me of a place of great diversity with the countrys cohabitants living in such different worlds, from the slums to the millionaires, such as the stars of their Bollywood movies, for example. This image became clearer to me more than ever after watching the film 'Slumdog Millionaire' (directed by Danny Boyle), which shows a boy from the slums proving his innoncence of not cheating whilst playing the on the television show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. The film shows his struggles through his childhood and how he used his own initiaive to survive. The film feautures a scene where they visit the Taj Mahal in a ploy to scam tourists and make money, from the train journey to the attraction. The clip below is from the film and shows the children stealing and selling to rich people on the train.

 

 From my perception of India through the Slumdog Millionnaire film, I would like my character to travel through India and experience the different takes on life they have, as well as their different demographics and the way that the rich and moneyless live differently. From visiting the Taj Mahal, she will see the children who beg for food and money around the building and also the rich of India, being the tourists and how the different civilisations treat eachother. She will see children begging and later playing when their working day is done- making her see a different perception of life and it will teach her a vital lesson in life- which every one will experience at some point- with the idea to 'appreciate the smaller things in life.' It will hit home to her exactly how lucky she is, and although she will feel low at some points. She will come out of the eye-opening experience and this will be the first major time that the audience see her flourish and start to grow older.

She then travels to the next wonder, The Pyramids of Giza, which were built as tombs for the ancient countrys Pharoahs. The main religion on the country is Muslim, which will be another culture and religion change to what the character will be used to. Whilst visiting Egypt, she will meet a Muslim boy of her age who she falls in love with and has a secret relationship with during her stay here because they are both worried about the shame and shock that it may or may not bring upon his family. This brings out the rebellion in which teenagers often thrive upon and also the controversy in religions and their views and their impact on the characters. This idea I had reminded me of Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, where two young lovers have a hidden relationship because of their families rivalry.

 Another thing that she will come into contact with whilst in The Pyramids is peer pressure of drugs. From personal experience, Egyptian drug dealers are very keen on trying to sell to tourists inside the ancient pyramids, with workers offering them at every chance they can whilst working inside the tombs. This is something that she will come face to face with, and although her lover choses to take the drugs, she will not give in to the peer pressure. Again, this shows rebellion on her boyfriends behalf, but also her having to deal with passing on something that she knows is wrong and illegal even with the pressure her boyfriend tries to put her under. After seeing their relationship blossom, they are caught by her boyfriends father and so she moves to her next destination. She has to leave her boyfriend and experiences heartbreak for the first time.


Lastly, she vists Italy where the Colosseum is located. This wonder is an ampitheatre built by the romans in 72 AD. As Italy is in Europe, she finds that it is less of a culture shock to the rest of the countries. Italians are known for their hearty meals, stereotypically being pizza and pasta. She finds a group of girls who she becomes great friends with when she's eating in a restaurant for dinner. She spends almost all of her time with them, night and day and they become the best of friends. Although all the girls speak good english, they still have a language barrier and of course, their different languages is something they do not have in common. She notices more and more that the girls choose to speak in Italian around her rather than English, which makes them grow apart. She feels disheartened by this, but as we have seen her story make her evolve from a vulnerable teenage girl to a young adult, she choses to go home and back to her family and friends where she knows she will be happier.


She travels home, and there is a shot of her in an aeroplane with a world map in the background, showing her travelling home from Italy. On the plane, you see her in the window and how her character and appreance has changed throughout the trip- showing her blossoming and growing into herself. She reminises on her trip, and although it wasnt exactly how she had anticipated, with maybe more lows than highs, she understands the quote shown at the beginning of the animation 'The world is a book, and those who do not travel only read one page' and she realises she has the rest of her new life to look forward to, now she is no longer an unconfident immature teenage girl and is instead a beaming, happy young adult.