Beginning Production

I am currently working on the disney brief for my business of animation module, which is a really interesting brief which asks you to design a character that would be the main character is a 4-14 year old tv show and produce 30 to 60 seconds of animation involving this character. I believe I may have mentioned this but my memory is appalling sometimes. Anyway having taken a closer look at the brief I discovered the deadline for submission was the March 4th, at the time I realised this the deadline was only a scary 5 weeks away (and is now an even scarier 4 weeks!!!!) anyway it turns out we dont have to enter the competition if we can complete the work on time as long as we do complete the work for the assessment deadline at the end of the term. But being me I decided in a very stinson fashion to say "Challenge Accepted" and so have set out to finish my planned animation in time to submit. Last week was mainly a week focussing on pre production which has gone well but is not completely finished, so I decided to continue on schedule as start producing stuff necessary for the animation and keep working on the pre production at the same time. Here are a few of the set models that are currently in production.

This is Isaac's old house out in the suburbs before his family move to the city.


Isaac's new, big, scary, and also very incomplete city school


I am using these as part of the background in the city. I liked the idea of the further something is away from the character the model 2D it is, but I liked the idea of instead of just making it an image on a plane that I would give it some thickness as it gave the nice feeling of a stage prop, I've even been tempted to attach pieces to the back that help stage prop cutouts stand up. I plan on using this style a lot through the animation for things such as cars, buses vehicles and other characters. The reasons for this are at least two fold but I can only think of two right now. Reason number one: its quick, simple, easy and most importantly doesn't require rigging! Isaac will be the only character who is rigged. Everyone else will be a cutout (so one or possibly more drawings of them in different poses depending on how important they are). Second Reason: this is the snazy arty/narrative decision which makes it seem like I'm not just lazy. As the brief is only interested in the main character I wanted there to be a really big distinction between him and every other character. Environment and other characters are important, without them your characters become very flat, so I wanted people to see the people Isaac interacts with and where his story is set but make sure they are really focusing on him and that it is clear he is the main character.