Inspiration (but for the plot this time!)

Having a think about the actual content of the animation itself I was imagining the lightning storm scene from 'Misfits' as a basic idea, a group of people running in fear from a 'falling sky', lead by Chicken Little. Though it wouldn't follow the plot exactly of 'unwarranted panic', the inspired comic that we are doing contains a twist end in which Chicken Little was right, so it is more taking inspiration from the moral and the famous line ''the sky is falling''.

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The storm scene which I talked about can be seen near the beginning of this video. Looking at how they are thrown around and the over the top actions and slow motion is what inspired me greatly toward this idea.

Music 

All great animation and movies have scores and music, so this is an important decision. I'm also thinking about which music I would put to the piece as I prefer this idea over dialogue. I also had the idea to include sound effects of the 'storm' which I could look at creating myself or downloading online.

Of course, songs with appropriate lyrics would be very fitting, but perhaps too cliché, leaving me to wonder if my music should be instrumental only with a pace that fits rather than words. I will look at thinking of examples when I begin to storyboard though I feel that a fast pace will be good, think songs that would play in big action scenes.

I can't title this post

Method

Thinking about the actual content of my animation, I feel like I will concentrate on looking at 2D animation. Although experimentation is important, it is something I have experience with, having created a 30 second hand drawn frame by frame animation before.

Having worked in this way before I know what didn't work out and I can try other methods of 2D animation as when creating this piece I was limited in software and ended up hand drawing each frame without onion skin and hoping for the best while piecing them together on Windows Movie Maker - obviously not the best method. I would like to look at traditional art to see if it is possible to work faster that way although digitally it would be easier to fix errors. Also I will definitely be using colour this time.

Colour/Tone & Story

As said above I definitely want to use colour, it has great importance in a lot of my examples and inspirations and I would like to look at using it to express emotion and tone. With the main theme of Chicken Little being panic/hysteria I want that to be the focus of my animation. My main idea is having the 'cast' gather and go into panic, running from the 'sky falling'. Continuing with putting importance onto colour and lighting I was thinking of looking at things like Nothern Lights and lightning storms. For the 'cast' themselves I was going to use humanised versions of the animals, therefore the same designs I will use in the comic itself even if not following the story that we are doing for it and instead taking a sort of inspiration from the original.

A look at the preliminary designs for

three of the characters:

Chicken Little, Foxy Loxy & Goosey Loosey

The designs shown above were my first designs for the characters we will be using in the comics. I've uploaded it just to give a look at my art style/the style I will be using and the sort of characters, a group of young adult friends.

Inspirations (again) (I'll stop soon) (maybe)

Thinking back more at animated music videos, my favourite potential route, I forgot to include a few of my favourites. 

Freak Kitchen - Freak of the Week

I love everything about this animation. The art style is beautiful. The movement in the hair is perfect and the lighting around the 2:40 mark. The whole video has a great colour palette based off of the background colours and lights.

In the 'making of' video, the director speaks about using camera effects as if it were live action which is what makes it so visually appealing, hardly any of the shots are static looking, however this combined with the 'rough' art style that he talks about is why I love it so much. I too would like to keep a very drawn looking style in my animation.

Disney

Snow White Dance Scene

The Little Mermaid - Poor Unfortunate Souls

I had to include my two favourite Disney scenes of all time. I far prefer the older Disney movies (Snow White, 1937 & The Little Mermaid, 1989), the character designs and the way they're animated. Personally, I dislike the newer 3D ones look, such as Frozen and Tangled. The characters all look the same therefore giving them less 'personality'. Poor Unfortunate Souls is a personal favourite because of the contrast between Ursula and Ariel, their body types and traits are shown through how they move.

More Inspiration

The colours and lighting used in this animated short are beautiful, as are the textures and general feel of the concept art which can be seen here

[ http://ca-tsuka.tumblr.com/post/111068253323/artworks-of-disneys-feast-short-film-from ]

[ Link is not my tumblr ]

The movements of the character, although non human, are very expressive. Although personally I feel like I won't wish to use voice overs or anything of that sort, the build into the background music really helps the pace of the piece.

Character Animation Attempts

On paper using a stop motion app on my iPhone, I created a few character animations. They're jittery and extremely unfinished looking but it was more to test out getting the character themselves across as I feel that this will be a very important aspect to the route I would like to go down.

This was inspired by a ring leader style character, I like the fluidity of it and it gets across her sort of 'sexy' character and integrates her accessories into her actions, with the movement of the hat.

The walking itself in this practice didn't work out very well but instead of a simple basic walk I tried to put more of a personality to her movement.