The Choice........

Sooooo seeing as Im now a little behind schedule on this project (partially my fault.... I could have done more work in college) Im gona be abit more realistic in my choice of brief...... if I want to get this project done properly and in time Id be better off doing the second brief. If I was to choose the first brief it will not only take more time in the design stage, but theres also the factor of mental blocks.... if my mind goes dead whilst coming up with ideas, it will put a real dent in the time I have left to animate.............

...................................................

Ok so heres the brief:




The interest for collectable vinyl toys is constantly growing throughout the world. The range of artistic and customisable toys, based around cute and colourful characters are adored by people of all ages. But it is also evident that the majority of collectors, or even those who have a general interest do not consist of a wide enough audience range for the toys to be marketed in many shops other than specialists.

So the aim of this project is to create a short 3D Animation sequence, which would be used to promote vinyl toys. The animation can be of either one particular range/collection of toys or a collaboration of a few, as this would be the first of a small series of animations..... so if only one range/collection is promoted, others would be promoted in later animations. This project is purely to create the starting point of these animations, who's purpose is to attract an even wider audience.

The Animation itself is to have some sort of simple plot where characters from a/a variety of vinyl toy ranges/collections interact with each other or the environment in ways that fit their personalities. Everything in the animation needs to be well modelled and textured in the same colourfull way the toys are designed, and the duration needs to be within the boundaries of 30-90secs. The target audience is pretty much all ages and all social backgrounds, so it must be appealing and appropriate to be viewed by everyone.

The benchmark for the animation is sort of the transition from real life toy to computer graphic. I think other appropriate examples which could be aimed to match or surpass are the Lego Bionicle animations and Star Wars Lego games' visual quality.

Lego Star Wars

Bionicle

Problems Problems Problems!!!!.............

ONCE AGAIN the hard drive of my home pc which I work on started to act up on me....... but this time round the partition with the Operating System and all my files has currupted, so this time I'm not able to just repair windows and save everything!!!!........ :(

Due to this annoying problem I spent a few days purely trying to find a resolution, but in the end having to order a new hard drive, thus loosing the work I had done so far for this project....... Not to worry though, all the lost stuff IS redoable...... what stresses me most though is the fact that I'v had to spend over a week and a half trying to sort this problem out, not doing hardly any work throughout the whole of that time..............

The Brief.......

Ok so, me being a reeeaaaaaally undecisive person, I'v managed to narrow it down to two possible briefs that I could do. Whichever I choose to do, I will post it up later on in final form. But untill then, here are the two briefs I have in mind:.......

The first is to generate a totally original set of characters, in accompanimant of a small environment to stage the animation. The characters must be simple, cute and colourfull, but also need to be modelled and textured to a good degree... they must be smooth and aesthetically attractive to look at. Same goes for the environment. The theme of the animation isn't set, so there is freedom to choose, BUT it must be 'fun' in a sense and appealing to a wide range of audiences. As for the animation itself, it needs to be smooth and show good use of animation principles. A humorous animation would be preferable, and also to be around 30-90secs long.

The second brief is to create a short animation for a vinyl toy company, with the purpose of promoting their products. The characters in the animation will obviously be the range of chracters the company sells as toys, so the design aspect of this brief is quite minimal as the majority is already pre-done. All the different toy ranges/series have background stories to them, so the story in the animation and the things the character do must stick to the background stories and character personalities (if defined) the company has already asigned to the the toy range/series. Again the animation must be staged in an environment, and this environment must also fit to the background story of the world of that particullar toy range/series. Modelling and texuring must have the same look and smoothness as the existing toys, and the animation (like with the first brief) needs to be smooth and show good use of animation principles, be humorous, and be around 30-90secs.


Like I said, I'm not too sure which brief to choose....... The first would be good in the sense that I would have more freedom in the visual style, but it would mean I have to spend a little more time trying to genrate ideas and designs, taking up more of my animation time.
If I were to choose the second brief, I wouldnt have to worry too much on the design past of the project saving me alot of thinking time, but limitations may arise in what I could get the characters to do.

I think I will just start to draw up some general ideas for both briefs, and maybe model a few small things that could be used in an environment.... and see where I go from there.

Brainstorming Time Again........

Generating your own brief for a project seems to be harder than working to a pre-given one, because you really need to consider the critereas you need to be working to. I think I'm pretty set on the idea of doing an animtion which is set within a theme, meaning the designed characters should each hav a similar visual style and will need to be placed within a modelled scene that looks believable to being those characters' world.

Also, I think it would be best not to go for a visual style that is realistic in any way.... I want to really focus on the animation, and I think going for a more cartoony style for the overall visual style would reduce time spent on modelling... not to say that it should looks low quality though, even though I'm focusing on th animation side of things, I still want to create a nice looking piece......


Even though I will do my main research after I'v come up with my brief, I needed to look at existing animations, concepts designs, illustrations etc. to get some ideas...... Looking at some existing 3D animations, I like the idea of making things quite colourfull, and to be honest it feels like any other way for a cartoony looking animation would just take increase the texturing time quite a bit and reduce the time I have to animate again. Another consideration is to have few characters, like around 2-3. Whilst looking around for ideas, Natasha showed me some vinyl toy collections, and it really helped juice up my creative thinking for this project..... I'm considering going a similar look to these toys, because they are pretty much exactly the type of colourfull character designs I was hoping to do...............

Intro....

Ok soooo its time to start the new project....... During the production of every piece of animation I'v done so far, I always run out of time towards the end thus ending up with little time to do some proper character animation. Even though I really enjoy animating, so far I'v not had the oportunity to really test my abilities in the area.... mostly my own fault really :P........

So for this project I'v decided to not choose one of the given optional briefs, but instead come up with my own brief which allows me to produce a nice piece of character animation. To do this I'm gonna need to look around for possible ideas (such as character design styles, themes, animation styles, etc,) and really consider what needs to be done in order to come up with an effective final outcome, so considerations like how many characters will be in the scene? How big will the environment be where the animation takes place? WILL there even be an environment? etc........