Monday, 4 May 2015
Sunday, 3 May 2015
The Ani Jam - Nina and Flick
As a class, we seem to have a propensity to work to foolishly improbable deadlines (see: 10 films 10 days), so i reckoned the challange of The Ani Jam wasn't anything i couldn't handle. After i convinced Vera to join me, we got to thinking about the sort of thing we'd like to create. We had both just seen the then latest film from London based studio Animade, called "Chronemics". We were fascinated at the creative play between light and dark, and decided to, if we could find a chance to, play with this aspect in our film.
Chronemics from Animade on Vimeo.
Aside from this one idea, we decided to go in sort of blind, with only a rough idea of what we wanted to do, no big plans. The story, characters etc would be decided on the night. We brought a range of materials, including a whole load of paper that we punched and put back into its packaging, which took forever.
The day of the Jam came, and after meeting and greeting and a few free beers at the Citizen M hotel in glasgow, we got assigned our words to base our film off of. We were assigned the word TRIP and the easter egg that everyone was assigned was CLOCK.
We decided to interpret trip in as many ways as we could. Trip, as in journey, trip, as in fall, trip, as in strange state of mind. Our initial idea was of a character wandering round in a strange void, where their interactions with the space would cause strange and unexpected outcomes (definitions one and three). As we were sketching out ideas for scenes, i came across a page in my sketchbook that i thought could be useful - a little character I'd drawn that sort of resembled a light switch. At this point we had the idea, that what the character reacted with was not the environment, but another character, who in turn changed and sculpted the environment.
Thus Nina and Flick were born
At this point we were about an hour in, we decided to spend no more than two hours storyboarding
and designing characters in order to get as much production time as possible. We thought of scenarios that these two characters could be in - Nina could switch flick and the air could turn to water, birds could turn to fish, things slow down, day turns to night, objects could change their form, time could pass, the floor could dissapear etc. We pieced the best of these together in a story where Nina meets Flick, spends the day exploring with him, before having to say goodbye. (also we managed to get a physical trip in the story, definition two, check). What we at first thought would be a weird and visually striking film, turned into quite a strangely sweet one, much thanks to Vera's character designs, especially Flick's who seemed to evoke an "Aww!" reaction from most people.
After about 40 hours of very little sleep, lots of free juice, croissants and pizza, and the repetition of the hotels playlist at least three times, Our frames were all drawn out. Then it was on to probably one of the most hellish editing experiences of my life. With less than four hours, the sound took a serious hit, and it almost didn't get finished. But we got it in probably bang on the deadline, I'm not even sure my brain probably looked like mashed potatoes at this point.
It took a lot of hard work and perseverance to finish this film. It probably wasn't healthy, what we did. In the end, it definitely payed off, what with us winning and all. What i learned from this project is that a) story is key, it is what engages people, and it is what makes animation worth doing a lot of the time, and b) it is so important to respect your team-mates, doing so will make sure you can make the best work possible.
Chronemics from Animade on Vimeo.
Aside from this one idea, we decided to go in sort of blind, with only a rough idea of what we wanted to do, no big plans. The story, characters etc would be decided on the night. We brought a range of materials, including a whole load of paper that we punched and put back into its packaging, which took forever.
The day of the Jam came, and after meeting and greeting and a few free beers at the Citizen M hotel in glasgow, we got assigned our words to base our film off of. We were assigned the word TRIP and the easter egg that everyone was assigned was CLOCK.
We decided to interpret trip in as many ways as we could. Trip, as in journey, trip, as in fall, trip, as in strange state of mind. Our initial idea was of a character wandering round in a strange void, where their interactions with the space would cause strange and unexpected outcomes (definitions one and three). As we were sketching out ideas for scenes, i came across a page in my sketchbook that i thought could be useful - a little character I'd drawn that sort of resembled a light switch. At this point we had the idea, that what the character reacted with was not the environment, but another character, who in turn changed and sculpted the environment.
Thus Nina and Flick were born
At this point we were about an hour in, we decided to spend no more than two hours storyboarding
and designing characters in order to get as much production time as possible. We thought of scenarios that these two characters could be in - Nina could switch flick and the air could turn to water, birds could turn to fish, things slow down, day turns to night, objects could change their form, time could pass, the floor could dissapear etc. We pieced the best of these together in a story where Nina meets Flick, spends the day exploring with him, before having to say goodbye. (also we managed to get a physical trip in the story, definition two, check). What we at first thought would be a weird and visually striking film, turned into quite a strangely sweet one, much thanks to Vera's character designs, especially Flick's who seemed to evoke an "Aww!" reaction from most people.
After about 40 hours of very little sleep, lots of free juice, croissants and pizza, and the repetition of the hotels playlist at least three times, Our frames were all drawn out. Then it was on to probably one of the most hellish editing experiences of my life. With less than four hours, the sound took a serious hit, and it almost didn't get finished. But we got it in probably bang on the deadline, I'm not even sure my brain probably looked like mashed potatoes at this point.
It took a lot of hard work and perseverance to finish this film. It probably wasn't healthy, what we did. In the end, it definitely payed off, what with us winning and all. What i learned from this project is that a) story is key, it is what engages people, and it is what makes animation worth doing a lot of the time, and b) it is so important to respect your team-mates, doing so will make sure you can make the best work possible.
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