Exhibition Project

So we want to get our work out there. We wanna show how hard we've been working, and present the fruits of our labour in a legitimate, professional way. Let's exhibit it.

A a group, we decided that a film showing accompanied by development work in a space outside of the college would push us to make work we were proud of showing.

There were a few considerations though:

Content
Venue
Fundraising
Promotion

Content
What did we want to show? We wanted to show films of a personal nature, self directed with little outside breifing, to display our animation and narrative skills, and visual talents. Any films from previous briefs that were suitable, such as 10 films 10 days, could be shown too.
Any supporting work could be shown too, as we were looking for a gallery space, or any individual illustrations or 3d work.
As for dates, we decided to set a tight schedule in order to challenge ourselves, late Feb, early March sort of time period.
The show would run for a week, with an opening night on the Friday, and regular hours until the Thursday. We will be inviting people for the opening night, but will be allowing anyone to enter on the other days.

Venue
We all looked at different venues to host our work such as summerhall, The Caves,  Edinburgh Contemporary Crafts, The Collective, City Art Centre, Museum of Modern Art, But in the end two caught our eye - Whitespace Gallery, and Interview Room 11 in The Forest Centre.

 (Whitespace Gallery)

(Interview Room 11)

These were the only two that were Affordable, willing to show our work and available in the window we had agreed upon (late Feb - early Mar). With this in mind,w e made a pros and cons list as to which venue we would decide on.

in the end we felt that whitespace was more suitable - despite being further away and costing more, it was a far more accessible and professional environment, more seats, and a more coherent venue structure.


Fundraising
so whitespace costs money to rent. We need to buy wine for opening night. We need money.
Basically, lots of bake sales - our first is due on the 9th of december.
I am talking to folk at EUSA, who have a bunch of money, that is saved up annually to fund student led projects and events, we are hoping to dip into this to assist the funding.
We have also calculated the amount of money we would all need to contribute are we unable to fund it from external sources. Of course, this amount will decrease the more we fundraise.

Promotion
In order to keep costs down, we will probably be doing only promotion only.online. We will make online posters advertising the venue, date, time etc.  These are yet to be designed. We will also make a short promotional film along the same lines. Hopefully this will drive up enough attention for the event.




So thats the plan, now we just gotta do it all.

The Man Who Lives in the Zoo

I think the best thing about this project was that i got to visit the zoo multiple times for free.
We were to meet Darren, the Head of Collections of Edinburgh Zoo to discuss his role in the zoo, his history, his life so we had a better understanding of who he is and what he does. Our initial trip, i drew whatever caught my eye, as i had no real plan of what i intended to do.

At this point i was still unsure of the film i wanted to make, but i knew i wanted to animate several animals, the ones with the most intriguing motions, which to me were, the penguins, for their clumsiness on land yet grace in water, the gibbbons for their comically long arms and energetic swinging, and the kudu for their grace and dancerly movements. I tried filming them all moving, but was unable to see any kudu on the day...

an extra video of some basic Kudu movement...

The basic thoughts of a story soon occurred to me, i wanted to make a film wherein the man who lived in the zoo clocks off for the day, and once the animals realise he is back in his home, they all have a party.

This very rough draft shows a quick rundown of imagery, people leaving the zoo, Darren going up the hill in the zoo, and arriving in his home, the penguins squaking alerting the other animals, divign in the pool, the monkeys swinging on a chain, the kudu jumping over the fence, Darren being alerted and checking outside, the animals falling asleep and darren returning to his home.


At this point, i began to think more in-depth about the environment the film would take place in. I liked what i had produced for the rough storyboard so decided to take those as rough sketches. i sketched a few locations that didn't exist, but also took photos of those that do exist, which will inform the environment of the final film

I elaborated on the story at this point. I thought about the target audience - i wanted this to be a film for kids of many ages, younger ones who would enjoy the shapes, bright colours and movements, kids who could enjoy a funny story, and grown ups who could appreciate a comical story but a visually nice piece of animation. Another of my aims was to create the zoo, but not to make it an exact replica of edinburgh zoo. It would have recognisable elements to it, such as the penguins (a famous zoo staple) but could also be indicative of any zoo, making it both a product of ednburgh zoo, and an enjoyable film about zoos, humans and animals.

At this point in the project, i brought in a collaborator, my classmate Vera. I was struggling to think of an aesthetic for the peice, and her inital sketches of character and colour were really interesting, so i asked her to join me. I would be in charge of story and animatic, while she would be responsible for colour, character design and aesthetic.

With this in mind I started Storyboarding

Here, i went more in depth into each shot, giving mroe detail into the motion and actions of all teh characters. I added a second round of more intense, faster movements for all the animals to really make the animals exciting, and i changed the ending to make darren notice the animals, and decide to go party with them.

Then, as a group, we annotated the storyboard to figure out rough timings by seconds (Blue Post it notes) and rough sound effects we wanted to use (Orange Post it notes).

I also produced a rough colour board that Vera Could Work off of to give a rough idea of the colours we wanted in the  film

With these decided, i made the animatic:






Sound played an important part in teh film, the way that it becomes softer and muted underwater, or indoors, i wanted to give it some dimensionality to make the film seem more dynamic and alive. The music was important too, as it gave the film more atmosphere, gentle and calm when darren walks to his home, but lively and hectic when the animals come out to play.

As of now, Vera is finalising some character sheets. After that we will go into production. We will be drawing the motion, and colouring the characters and the backgrounds digitally.