Back to the Old Grind!

Well, I am now back at college and I can honestly say I've missed it (and trust me, as far as education goes, thats something I don't say very often). I've had an eventful summer, mainly revolving around getting to America, spending three months with Brandon, the VERY stressful trip back (ffff), celebrating my 20th, my ongoing search for a job, spending the last remaining days with my best friends who are all going their seperate ways to different universities around the country and... well, yeah, long story short, there's been a lot going on.

But lets get cracking with the academic stuff, shall we?

It is nearing the end of my first week back at college and I have already made a few differences to my project, some major, others not so. The major stuff is mainly the story. We had a discussion as a group about our ideas and offered and were offered ideas to and from people. My idea to redo my pigeon story has been approved, which I was most worried about as I wasn't sure if we had to do something different from previous projects (also, I have a terrible habit of needing to redo something I'm not happy with).

However, the story in general is going to be very different now. Rather than Pink losing his foot being the central focus, I am now adding MORE pigeons and more stories, as the animation will now be a documentary focusing on how pigeons, and possibly other types of birds, live in the city. I intend to keep my four pigeons characters and their personalities pretty much intact but I will also create a few more pigeons for them to interact with. The newest addition is a brown pigeon, currently titled Tweak, who is a self proclaimed prophet warning other birds of the impending apocalypse brought by the eagles (based on a true situation where eagles were set on pigeons to bring down their population), a prophecy which is ignored by everyone else.

It is something of a parody of how people in the city live as well, portrayed by pigeons. But where the comedy mainly comes from is how often the narrator of the animation seems to get the pigeons actions and motives wrong. For example, when Lilac is chasing after Green in order to kick his feathered behind (yes, they still hate each other), the narrator comments on the pigeons mating ritual and considers the female the 'dominant one in the relationship'. It is normal for pigeons to chase each other when courting so it isn't too surprising that the narrator thinks that way, even though the subtitles of the pigeons speech defy what the narrator thinks. I think the main reason why I like this idea so much is because although the narrator is an expert and studies these pigeons, they still get it wrong, which kind of relates to how we assume what animals are doing and how we can miss the point entirely.

Pink is still going to be in a state of shock for most of the animation as he still loses his foot and he is still the poor naive soul caught in tug-o-war between Green and Lilac. Blue is also a part of this, mainly trying to waken up Pink but Blue also has her own individual conflict. Mainly, she is a female yet looks like a male and often has a hard time attracting a male, often catching the eye of females instead. This is how Lilac and Blue end up meeting each other before they end up finding Green and Pink post amputation.

I still want to create a few more characters and I'm working on how I'm going to do the backgrounds but for the most part I know exactly what I am going to do. I need to rewrite the script and do new character sheets for ALL the characters, even the ones I've already done. I showed Paul my character sheet and while he was happy with the character, he wasn't too enamored with the rest of the sheet. To be honest, I wasn't all that much either, as it was mainly a lighter version of the colour of the pigeons splattered in pigeon poo. I have a few ideas of what I can do for backgrounds, mainly taking photos of certain parts of Newcastle or objects that can relate to the individual pigeon (discarded food for Green to refer to his plumpness, discarded crisp packets and newspapers for Tweak as he often hides in them or perhaps feathers as he sheds them due to stress), or making every sheet like a research file on the individual pigeon, with the description being written by the researcher/narrator.

Long story short, I've got a lot to think about revolving around my animation. One more thing I want to add in is my research, which is basically references on the style of characters, background and previous character designs of pigeons that other animators/character designers have done.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Yeah yeah, I know you may or may not have something to say about this. However, you'll notice that I've started to take inspiration from this show into my own work, namely the lineart style, eyecatching colours and... well, damnit, I just love everything about this show in general, especially how they used flash to make the movements so smooth. I'd gush over it but to be honest I think it really needs a blog entry all of its own to really get into the meat of it. I'll get to that one of these days.
But yes, how it relates to this project. The thick lineart used around the wings, and indeed the feather pattern of the pigeons, are based on the pegasus pony wings. The bright unique colours that you wouldn't expect ponies to be (although would maybe expect these ponies to be) catch your attention, another reason why I have made the pigeons different colours. I also like the backgrounds but I don't know if I will devote much time to them when I'm working on the characters, which is one reason why I want to take photos of potential backgrounds. While there aren't many similarities in this project, it is a huge inspiration regardless and will probably continue to be in future projects.

Foamy The Squirrel

Ahh, bit of a contrast here. Like My Little Pony, Foamy was done in flash. The movement is less smooth but that suits the art style and adds to the humour. I mean come on, if you know Foamy, you'd realise smooth movement doesn't suit him. He's a squirrel, those buggers move fast!
However, I've recently taken inspiration from the newer animations in the rebooted version. The characters are cartoon, as is anything moving in the scene such as flickering light, yet the backgrounds are realistic, possibly with a filter, which I'm considering doing for this project.

Angela Anaconda

Again another candidate in terms of background, not so much on character movement. However, as the previous module involving my pigeons used cut out style of animation, I figured I should look at examples I have looked at previously for ideas.

I might possibly make my backgrounds appear a bit more realistic than this as it seems like a collage of objects. That said, I like the simplistic childlike look that it gives the show and it seems really fitting for the story. It's made me think hard about what I want the background to look like for my work in order for it to fit the theme.

Bolt

Now, these pigeons, I believe, have been the most help so far in terms of character design and use of colour. The animators of this movie had the same idea as me in that different colours will make the pigeons stand out from each other. Yes their body shapes and texture of feathers are different but its not something that the audience can really pick out at first glance and without the different colour feathers, the audience will more than likely get confused which is which.

These pigeons were the main inspiration between most of my characters so far, the fat blue one relating to Green, the slim greenish one relating to Blue (yeah, a bit reversed there) and the pink ruffled one relating to Pink in looks and Tweak in ruffled appearance and derped eyes.

Valiant

I think I'll make this my last research example of this entry as this is getting long and I have some other stuff I need to crack on with. This would be an interesting reference for any exaggerated expression that I might use in my work, as these pigeons move closer to humans than pigeons and have very little pigeon mannerisms. It is also something of a reference for any war veteran pigeon characters I might include, in reference to the pigeons who transported messages throughout the war. I'm fairly certain that pigeons wouldn't live that long to be alive today but eh, considering little else in this would make much sense, I think I could be forgiven for it!

Before I go, I should make a basic plan of what I intend to do over the weekend. We've been told that we MUST have research done for monday, so thats a priority. I'd also like to have my new script finished in time to share and possibly have some of the new character sheets done, once I decide how I am going to do them. And I would like to upload more stuff I have done in my spare time; I have a few new things to share.

Well, thats pretty much all there is so far. I'm now gonna look at Animation career ideas and look at the ones that play to my strengths. Tally ho, everyone!

I should probably link this here as I seem to be having trouble saving files to places right now. Damn Macs, always have an adjustment period with these things...

http://www.skillset.org/animation/careers/

This will be useful for my project too: http://www.pigeonimpossible.com/blog/?p=181

... ok, seriously, I'm done now.