Tuesday, November 10, 2009

FILM FILM FILM.

LOL.
Wo i've been story boarding my film. Gotta change some stuff. I haven't finished it but I want to have an animatic by wednesday. :D

So i'm hoping that it'll be ok. I've been tring to do stuff in flash. I realized tha tif i'm gonna be here i need ot really learn how to use each and every single program that's on these computers. That's part of my education. Cal Arts leaves so much to be discovered on our own. Sorta frustrating but i've gotta learn how to do it.

I also have been trying to use photoshop. I suck at it. I'd much rather use open canvas but I've GOTTA learn photoshop. haha.a


So i did these as a reference




I've decided to set my film in the 50's. I thought that'd be a really fun interesting era to place it in. I could also play up alot of fun designey things. :D So i changed the boy's design some little boys clothes fromt he 50s. It'd be really cool then because i know that in the 50s gender roles were strong. hahaha. Oh i'm excited

I think if there's one thing about this year that i'm really proud of it, it's setting up plans and acutally making them happen. Yeah, my drawing need to improve, but I'm working at it. And i've learned that it's better to just DO something than to sit there and fus about it and get nothing. I've learned that frorm watching some other students here that don't show work in class because they don't think it's good enough or whatever. You put it up and you put it out there, the critique is given and you get better. Sure I look at a lot of my classmates and wish i were as good as them but honestly, I'm improving. I'm improving a lot. My habbits are getting better and the way i approach things is improving. I can't over look that. I'm working on changing my slight insecurities to inspirations. :) I'm so proud of my classmates. :D

Monday, November 2, 2009

Tom Orec..ish???

lol. So we were supposed to draw like tom Orec this week. I don't think I nailed it but i learned something. Even if i was resistant to this assingment I got something out of it. I sorta like what I did. :)





After posting my film idea some places, someone pretty much told me that my character designs lack appeal for my film. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Being in character design class I've learned that what most of the animation industry in america considers "appealing" isn't necessarily what i find appleaing 100 percent of the time. i guess They have a valid opinion but well, i've decided to play with my characters but stick to my idea and my basic design. I need to stop second guessing myself and just go for it. Peopl have given me suggesitons on shortening certain parts of my film and I think after I do, it'll be able to work. I'm planningon havinga very rough animatic by the ed of this week. I've gotta start figuring out stuff now.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

New Film prompts- ADVICE AND OPINTIONS REQESTED

So today I pretty much spent the entire day recovering from the epic Halloween party. I've been supre behind on work since I spent the last 3 days sewing together my native american costume. hahah. But I really had fun because I proved to myself that I could actually sew. :D So I'm happy about that but I've decided that I should really wait til break before I try to do any more sewing projects as that takes TIME. hahaha.

So when I woke up today I told myself that I'd sit down and start to figure out what exactally my film idea was It's now 1:31 AM on sunday. hahah. I did nothing today. This is becomming somewhat of a habbit. Last week it worked out but this week i've got an entire storyboard to finish, a layout to do, animation to bullshit and my film idea to work on. Aye. So much for being able to manage my personal life and my school life. hahaha. It's so hard to figure this all out. I'm here because I want to make a good film. I've improved so much this year in just the few months that i've been here. I'm really proud of myself. BUT all my improvement won't be a damn thing if I still end up putting together a sshitty film.


After doing my scene for animation class and various other things I've finally come to the decision that one of the major things that I need to work on is timing. I think this week i'm goin to make a POINT of doing several bouncing ball exercises. I've always sorta just brushed those exercises off my shoulder wanting to do somehing more complex and complicated. but I've realized that just because something is complex doesn't mean it's necessarily good. And besides, you've gotta learn how to crawl before you learn how to run. So if I can't animate a bouncing ball...how the hell am I going to be able to animate dynamic action? As frustrated as I am this year with my animation teacher, I"m going to have to work with him. i'm going to have to work through it and I'm going to need to start taking things into my own hands. As horrible as it is, Ca Arts doesn't teach you how to animate. I for one really need to learn how to do that and fast. I feel like i've got an idea but i'm lacking a full understanding of the 12 principles. Neither of my animation teachers thus far have truly made an effort to explain to me how to use those well but I can't rely on them to give me a good education. Afterall, they're only being paid 100 bucks per class.


Anyways. So I wanted to type some prompts into my blogger. I can't seem to type anything in my word processor and I'm really impatient and I like t be able to TYPE TYPE TYPE. hahah.a

So here it goes.

I'm going to just WRITE and not think about time. This is my first pass so I'm gonna figure out what i need, what I don't and how i can fit soethigm impactful into a 2:30 piece.
The essentials i need in the story are:
+Mother disapproving of crossdressing son
+Boy enjoying/expressing pleasure from crossdressing/being a girl
+Boy falling and getting hurt
+Mother realizing that son enjoys crossdressing and gives him the pink hat. and changes her

-__________________

The film opens with a boy walking into his mother's room. He is stunned by all the pretty clothes. We cut to him fullly dressed in his mother's clothes and the room in a complete mess. Clothes everywhere. After panning up to him, he leans forward to put on make up in the mirror. He reaches up to put a pink hat on. The pink hat completes the look. In the reflection of the mirror we see his mother bursting into the room. She leans over and rubs the make up off of his face and takes off the dress he had put on She is visibly disappointed. The boy starts to lightly cry. He grabs the hat and runs out of the house. His mother goes after him, but doesn't run further than the door. She watches her son run out of the house and looks down at the dress almost questioning whether or not she should have done what she just did.

The boy runs around the neighborhood until he feels the need to stop and cry. He falls down over by a post and starts to cry into the hat. As he sits there tearfully, a girl in a black dress and a pirate hat on passes him. She leans over to see what's wrong. She leans over and gets his attention. He puts the hat ont he boys head. The two exchange a smile. She laughs and grabs him by the hand and pick leads him off somewhere as he is still trying to clear the tears from his eyes.

She leads him to her back yard. She proudly presents what she clearly believes to be a magnficent tree house. In actuality, the treehouse is a ladder with a few flat boards in a tree. She's so excited and proud of it that she leads him up to the tree house promtly after introducing it to him. She climbs up all excitedly and he slowly and steadily comes up the tree house. He is visibly uncomfortable.

When on the flat boards of the tree house he looks around unimpressed. The girl urges him to close his eyes and to imagine. She closes her eyes and imagines the tree house to be a magnificent structure more than 4 times the current size. Her imaginations become reality and the boards grow into a large tree house that soars over the houses around it. The boy sees the girls imaginations too. He then decides to make his imaginary dreams come true as well. He imagines that he is a beautiful princess. He closes his eyes. Suddenly the side of the tree house changes into the side of a castle. and when he opens them again, he is wearing a beautiful pink dress. The girl is pleased to have someone share this magical space with. She claps her hands in excitement. The girl imagines that she is the captain of a glorious pirate ship. She closes her eyes. The opposite side fo the house then sprouts into the end of a ship with a wheel. When she opens her eyes she's in full on pirate captain gear. The boy and the girl run to each other and laugh playfully, proud of what their imaginations have created! The boy runs up the castle tower to the very top. He pears out of the tower like the classic maiden trapped in the tower. The girl takes on the role of the knight in shining armor. She grabs a stick that then turns into a shiny sword. She runs up the tower to rescue the damsal in distress. However on the way up, she is confronted by a monster that looks suspiciously like a teddy bear. She fights the monster and quickly defeats it. She rushes up to the tower to rescue the boy. The boy is overjoyed! He begins to start a dramatic sigh of relief when he suddenly loses balance and appears to fall from the tower onto the floor that seems miles and miles down. The world created by their imagination crumbles. We see the same old "tree house" and ladder and various objects scattered around them that they were using for make believe. The boy is laying on the floor obviously hurt with the pink hat splayed to the side of him. The girl is worried and runs off to find help.

We cut to a hospital room. The girl is sitting on a chair for visitors. Sad and tearful. His mother walks into the hospital room. He boy has a broken leg and is propped up in the bed with his leg in a harness. His mother comes into the room with mixed emotions. She regrets what happened earlier in the day but she is happy that her son is ok. She looks at her hurt son. He smiles up lovingly at her. She takes the pink hat and places it on his head and gives her son a reassuring smile.
end.


_____
So i like this. I FEEL like i can do it. and I feel like i'll be ok with time. I don't really know though. I could be wrong. I really hope i'm not. ahhaa.

So PLEASE tell me what you think. I'm pretty unsure about the meat in the middle of the story.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

layout and character sheet.

This week has been totally redickadonk. It's halloween soon and i don't quite have my costume together. DX of fail. so many things to do. :(

Anyways, I've been letting my film idea brew in my head. I really like it. I really do. :D I'm gonna try to draw/write something up rto show it to my story teacher. I really wanna be able to make this idea work.

I sorta started to think about this sorta changing....sheet thing..i forget what they're called...or something they walk past and come out as different characters. I dunno. lol. I still need to come up with some sort of villian. i was thinking that they could imagine the teddy bear as a villian. :D

ugh just thinking about it i get all excited. :D

I have some designs for the girl character

When pitching my idea to my friend, my friend said that she COULD be an imaginary friend of his. Though I wonder if that's really a good idea. I"m sorta like...I dunno. conflicted. She could be an imaginary friend but then why isn't she more imaginary? I sorta like her as this child hood friend that he plays with. It's also 2 minutes long so I can't get into too much. hahah


I used them for my layout assingment. lol.I love these characters the more i draw them.

I feel like i'm reaching another level lately. You know when you work really hard and your style starts to change and you just feel a DIFFERENCE? That's sorta how i feel. :) I'm getting better and my worth ethic is a shitload improved ffrom last year. :D

I'm really hoping that my film comes out the way I want it to. :)

Monday, October 26, 2009

BAKU!!

Mkay so. I basically am in love with these damn spirits.
I did a quick google search for japanese monsters and I saw this. I was totally in love with them.
Baku's are essentially dream eaters. They devour both good and bad dreams. They're supposed to have elephant heads and tiger/lion bodies.
tis amazing


I love em. :D
So I went off to draw them. The assignment was to draw a monster and two kids. I was more intersted in the monster. hha





The Japanophile within me became really obvious for this assingment. hhaha
I used a couple of sites
http://www.dicts.info/dictionary.php?l1=English&l2=Japanese_Romaji
and
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~danken/kanjidic.html

lol
I'm such a japanophile.

I was going to paint these but I'm SOO BEHIND THIS WEEK. Like oh my god. It's about 5am right now. I still haven't TOUCHED my animation since last week. I'm NOT going to bed. gonna force myself to stay up. I have crap to do for wednesday too. aw FML.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

woking out characters.

So i've been not sleeping lately. lol. I wasted an entire day doing nothing. It's not 6:27 am and i'm totally freaking out because I haven't done anything. I need to get my character designs done by monday. I'm thinking of doing some cool asian-y-like designs. ahha. Who knows!!

Anywho, i finally put together a sort of sheet for my main character. Obviously i needed a ruler, but I think I'm able to understand this stuff pretty darn clearly. lol.

As you can see, i've simplified the character! hhahahaa. For the best honestly. hahah. He's a lot easier to work with.
I have a scene due on tuesday. If i can work really good, I wanna put it through after effects. We'll have to see though

Friday, October 23, 2009

Film idea Developments-TREEHOUZEE

:D

So last night while trying to figure out my layout assingment, I THINK I came to another realization.

When I was younger, I ALWAYS wanted a treehouse. I begged my parents but I never got one. :( To me, tree-houses are so...defaulty fantasy. You know. Living in trees? It's so whimsical. :D
So I decided that i wanna put my flim in a treehouse. A rickety, unstable treehouse that transforms into something fantastic when the imagination of two gender swamped children act out different things during dress up. :D I thought about the film startingout the same. Mom catches him trying on her clothes. He's reprimanded and sent to his room. The next day he wakes up and goes out to play with his friend. Before he leaves, mom asks where her pink hat isn and warns him not to play in the treehouse. He doesn't know and he goes outside to play. They act out fun scenes with eachother. The boy will fall out of the tree house, getting hurt. the mom will rush out to see if he's ok. Boy ends up going to the hospital for recovery. To make him happy, she gives him the pink hat that he took from her and smiles.

So it's a character arc of sorts i guess. I really wanna develop this. really bad. ugh. I'm worried about time but i THINK that i can do it. I've been watching some commericals lately. There was one Malyasian commercial in particular that was about 2;30 long and it was able to get a great amountof story in that short short amount of time.

Here it is. :D


Soooooooooo. yeah. I think i can do it. It's all gonna be about WHAT to show. What i need to add what i need to cut. Once i figure that out, i can do it.

Anywho, figure drawing was prettyfail this week. I'll upload it laterif i feel the need to

but here's my layout assingments.




I've GOTTA work on my draftsmanship. I've been trying to draw stuff straight on the computer lately. I realize that's not really workin' out. Gotta get back to pencil

Well this is a new week. I'll see what i can do. :D