Week 5 (20th-24th October)

Monday 20th October

Working on some environment concepts finally. A fun drawinb exercise of drawing a random shape and then turning it into a unique house design. Then I copied and printed the page to physically make a collage of the houses, to figure out the way the Machine could assemble them. I later made a second version with the leftover pieces


Sean posted about a postgraduate Rotary Club Bursary of £5000, that would REALLY help me! Pay for my own Dragonframe license and camera as a long term investment and exploration with industry standard materials (and pay my tuition fees...)


Tuesday 21st October 

Useful lecture on scriptwriting and making a treatment, I need to write out a clearer story and it gave me a few interesting things to think about

Presented ideas. People seem to be on board with the concept of the creature stealing pieces of the buildings. Sean said he'd look in to finding a filming space and a Dragonframe license for Semester 2.

Sean suggested I could make a trailer and a pitch deck instead of trying to complete an entire film in this time. I'm not completely against the idea; I can film the trailer shots first and then film everything extra if I have time, and I can use the trailer for kickstater funding after university. It also means I can expand the plot more as I'm no longer constrained to a three minute limit

Planning to make the sets and models modular, adding wires and pieces on top of everything and reusing them between shots

A lot of inspirations for me to look at:

  • 9 (2009)
  • Boxtrolls 
  • Pinocchio 
  • Robots (2005)
  • Winchester Mystery House
  • Studson Studio "Howl's Moving Castle" junk build
  • GlaDOS (Portal)
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (steampunk aesthetic?)
  • Look at the use of cinematic lighting on sets

Reaching out to a storyboard friend Freyja to see if she’d be interested in helping on my project, since Sean mentioned that we could do external collaboration. I still want to do beatboards and plot illustrations, but if I can hand off the actual storyboard to someone else then I have gorgeous boards for the animatic/pitch and I have that time to focus on concept and other areas. Just one less thing to do and I’d like to have more names in the credits 


Wednesday 22nd October 

Sean provided feedback from yesterday, plenty to think about. Said the concept is visually and thematically compelling and the initial concept holds strong potential for development. The direction of the narrative structure (including central themes/motifs) is well established, but some elements still require refinement and clarification within a script. The concept of H3LPR is compelling but requires more exploration to ensure emotional clarity and philosophical resonance. Overall architecture and visual style is compelling, and suggested that the character designs (even though still in early stages) could benefit from being exaggerated in the same way to align stylistically with the surreal gothic atmosphere of the world. 

I completely agree with Sean's feedback, I need to work on a script ASAP, and I need to do a lot of character design development to find a unique style as I'm not quite as comfortable with character design as I am with environments. I want a really sculpted unique style

While doing research for my written work I remembered that Henry Selick’s “Wendell And Wild” doesn’t erase the face plates in post production (unlike his Coraline). In fact it’s a feature of the character design; see Raul and Kat's designs, the seams are still visible across their noses.

 If I can work that into my designs and try the 3D modelling/printed face plates then that’s WAY less time spent in post-production erasing them, and emphasised the handcrafted aspect even more 

Wendell and Wild character design - https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/wendell-and-wild-pablo-lobato-interview-222615.html

Looking at Pinocchio and Wendell and Wild character designs (and perhaps LAIKA/Boxtrolls) would help inform a visual language for characters. Pinocchio has texture and a degree of exaggeration whereas Wendell and Wild is very unique with it's stylistic approach 


Thursday 23rd October 

Been learning character modelling in Zbrush! I was excited for this. I decided to model Tails from the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise, as he seemed a little simpler to model. 
I was running into a LOT of glitches and issues (mostly when attempting to create an adaptive skin of the zsphere blocking), but we're slowly getting somewhere...

With Phil's assistance, I managed to get the basic shapes blocked out. Started off with z-sphere blocking before moving over to the brush tools. I had to leave Tails' hair strands until the end because they aren't symmetrical so it was throwing everything off. The turnaround also wasn't accurate as the eye placement didn't make sense on the side profile, so I've been improvising a little bit. He's still looking very rough at the moment, but it's a start. 

I'd really like to finish this model at some point and be able to take a full 3D model to completion. There's an additional simple costume (detective from TMOSTH) he has that could also be fun to model, depending on how this goes. But for now I think it would still be much quicker to model everything practically and use 2D matte paintings rather than utilising 3D. I only really want to use 3D for a facial plate 3D-print, if that.


Friday 24th October

Sean spoke with department. DJCAD only has 5 Dragonframe licenses and they’re all used in semester 1, however semester 2 they could find one for me; works out because I won’t need it first semester. Can’t find me a solo room everywhere but we might be able to make the kitchen space work, there’s a good amount of space there, get some blackouts lighting and a table set up there. I’m concerned people may nick stuff since we don’t have a lock on the studio door, and apparently people from other masters courses frequently come in and use those main doors where I would be filming. Can’t book out equipment for long term use (is it even safe to leave in studio? Can I find a locker?) but can for a few weeks at a time, maybe longer if I speak to DEL

Watched Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” in the DCA and am feeling very inspired by the set design for the lab!! And the colour palettes too, gorgeous. Would be fun to do a mock colour script of it at some point. Between this and "Pinocchio" Guillermo del Toro is becoming a big influence










Freyja has officially agreed to help storyboard! Mostly online since she’s in Edinburgh now but aiming to have one or two meetings in person if possible

I have a LOT to catch up on over reading week! 


Weekend

Saturday 25th - trying to find article for my Contextual Analysis task. Found two very good papers from The Animation Guild (though one is just a summary/extension of the other, so same data set) about the impact of Generative AI on the Animation Industry. It's hard to find academic papers on animation, and I'm not finding much academic on stop motion at all. Found a few opinionative articles talking about stop motion vs AI (and some quotes from Guillermo Del Toro and Henry Selick), but nothing to really analyse. Is there a way to link stop motion opinions to the AI critical analysis or should I just include that briefly in justification of my project rationale? 

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