a quick tryyy

SO this is the first real bash at animating anything together... the idea is that itll be them crazy troopers rocking off to their helichoppers, then saiiiiling over the desert! The ground, being a 2d layer, makes them look like theyre sliding through a strange universe though, the timings on the fades are out, the transition between the two scenes is nowehere near seamless, and the guy in the helicopters head keeps getting all messy! Other than that, bangin!!

Ideas and Styles!!

As we've mentioned, we've changed our idea of the treatment for the piece. We are now aiming for a 2.5d sorta vibe, as demonstrated in some of the pieces below!!

This ones somewhat shit, but if we aim low we can achieve much! :D Nah, its the style we are aiming for, but much too simplistic, as we have grand ideas for it and really want to make something visually inspiriing. As below...!

This ones much more like it! For me personally, this is "the bar" and what I am hoping for us to be able to look at our own work next to! There is also a very brief making of for one of the pieces from the game, its vague, but mentions how the made the pieces in photoshop and aftereffects :)

Something I particularly like is that, although knocking the first piece for being too simple, the infamous ones are extremely effective whilst only using static images, but throwing effects and so on on top.

Starting Afresh!

Hey ben, here is a proposal for you...

....go fuck yourself!! Now heres a proposal for our work....

We are aiming to create a 2.5 dimensional piece depicting a war or battle scene. The idea behind it is that a young boy is seen playing in his room with his toy soldiers, simply handling them and making crashing noises. He is having a great deal of pleasure playing with himself, untill his Mother interupts him and calls him for dinner. He places down the soldiers and runs downstairs, leaving the toys in a used but fairly orderly state.

At this point, the action will begin - the camera will zoom right in on the face of one individual toy soldier, and then pull out - this is where the “switch” happens, between the reality of the boys room, and the war taking place. This soldier is our main protagonist and we follow him during his brave battle, in which he is eventually wounded and killed. As he lies in the sand, covered in menstrual blood and shrapnel, the sounds of the war slowly fade and we hear little Timmy running back upstairs. This is the switch back from the war, and we then see that where the battle has been taken place, Timmys boudoir is now quite the state, and as he picks up the “lead” toy soldier, we see him glance toward a framed photo on the side. THe photo is of him, his mother, and a father dressed in army gear. The message behind it is that although there is war going on in the world all the time, we have allowed ourselves to take a back seat and just view it as nothing more than a news update, and in the case of Timmy, his Dad has been absolutley raped by the taliban :(

I imagine you may want to reword a few bits there before sending it to Ros and Nancy,

but the general idea of it is there, so lemme knooooow!!

just been drawing over some images of protestors and shizz, seeing as our story is only dead vague at the moment I thought there could be some form of the soldiers seeing what theyre fighting for or whatnot, in this case the freedom of these lovely colourful chappies!

colourblind prick

just a rough idea of how the camera could give a sense of perspective, with minimal movement in the background, and then the soldiers could be in battle at in the foreground or some shizzzz. the qualities shocking cuase a)I did it in about ten minutes and b) I had loads of donkey porn in the background so everything was slowing right down.

new idea to the story...

I have had a long hard think about things, and have an idea to develop the story...I think the 'war' between the toy soldiers should be representative of the most recent war in Iraq. But at the beginning of the animation i think the boy should be playing with plastic toy boxers (the big robot like ones), and then towards the end the 'war' should stop being between the toy soldiers and fight the bigger issuse...the giant robot boxers.

we like?

love ben

x

Whats this?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwv9iCIAbrw

Hey Benji Boy, if me and my dad ever get out of the shower then above is a link to a "making of" for that Rise Against video. It doesnt really show off loads that we can take from, but the idea of having to build our scene, and use small cameras I quite like, then green screening our new chums into it! They can be a bit preachy, but its just a cool looking vid!

Davidof Cuttlier x x

Daaaaaaave says:

saying how it represents how war and the loss of life is taken for granted, and the way in which it snaps back into happy chappy playing with his toys is a metaphor for the way that although we know war is real and going on, its in the back of our conscious like a childs game, where youre like "oh, how many dead?" then get back to your day to day business

Ben says:

sweet

Ben says:

right so...and overlay of our idea is just based on the soldier...

Ben says:

do you want to incorporate the barbie and any way?

Daaaaaaave says:

CAN DOOOO! The way id see it would be that potentially the soldier could at some point crack out a photo of some fit baaaaabe, who it turns out is barbs and our little soldier chap could end up dead, and as it pans out from the toy soldiers at the end, we see that the kid had a sister and her barbies on the floor with a tear

Daaaaaaave says:

or something gay

Daaaaaaave says:

lol

Daaaaaaave says:

i thinkt hats more an idea we'd have to alk about, id quite like us to whack some form of storyboards out this week, ieven jsut for the first half minute or something so we can start getting a feel for what we need

Daaaaaaave says:

if we're gonna greenscreen we need actors and costumes

Ben says:

yeah...deal!

Daaaaaaave says:

int he past we have been mega screwed by actors either not showing, or showing and being like "oh im embarassed!"

Daaaaaaave says:

so thats a tough call

Daaaaaaave says:

saying that, if we have a voice over for the soldier i know jsut the guy

Ben says:

yeah...

Daaaaaaave says:

he sounds amazing, we had him for radio last year

Ben says:

do we need full outfits?

Daaaaaaave says:

imagine jason statham with throat cancer beaing the shit out of hitler, how badass he'd sound

Daaaaaaave says:

THAT OUR GUY lol

Ben says:

ha

Ben says:

haha

Daaaaaaave says:

the way im seeing it in my head id say yeh, but thats another reason we need to whack out some sketches, so we can actually work it out

Daaaaaaave says:

seeee eachothers miiiiiiinds!!!

Ben says:

yes es

Ben says:

i need some plain paper!

Daaaaaaave says:

an idea thats just popped in

Daaaaaaave says:

did you ever have one of those planes

Daaaaaaave says:

you stuck the string to the ceiling, then turned the battery on

Daaaaaaave says:

and it flew in circles

Ben says:

i know what you mean

Daaaaaaave says:

in the kids room he could have one of those, and then when he leaves it oculd actually drop soldiers into the fight

Ben says:

id love to animate the fuck out of one of those!

Ben says:

but...to make it go round and round it would need to be three dimensional

Ben says:

(we should get all this in the blog!)

Ben says:

deal!

Daaaaaaave says:

thats another thing actually! Originally, i thought you wanted a real life kids room witha real life kid (oh yes!) and that itd then turn into animate, but then reading the proposal did you intend the kid to be animated from the start?

Ben says:

to keep the plane 2D though we could have it on the floor, and then have it take off and fly over the top, and a helicopter too...

Ben says:

oh yeah

Daaaaaaave says:

as personally i like the idea of it being real life, turning into animation as it protrays the different reality? BUT its your original concept

Ben says:

all animated...

Daaaaaaave says:

so no kids ah man

Daaaaaaave says:

im bailing

Daaaaaaave says:

lol

Ben says:

i think that all animated might still work, with some finer tweaking

Ben says:

instead of the composite video

Daaaaaaave says:

cunning! Im happy to go either path, see what looks sexiest

Ben says:

deal

Digital Media Proposal:

My idea for a 2D animation is for a child (young boy) to be playing with some toy soldiers, all of this scene will be made with photoshop, and the use of vectorizing all objects. The boy will start out in view, but then the focus of the animation will be on the toy soldiers, zooming in on the ‘war ground’. The child will play with the toy soldier, which will be a composite video made using green screen, and with the use of special effects. The child will then be called away by his mothers leaving the little soldiers scattered everywhere. The soldiers will then start moving around and breaking out into an actual war, a picture of a soldier's 'barbie girlfriend' will be shown. The ‘fight’ will go on until the little boy walks into the room where the room is perfectly left as it was before, although there will be his sisters doll with a tear (the same one from the picture) symbolising that war is always upsetting, and people are always lost.

Below is a summary of sorts based on the communications and meets me and Benjamin have had over the previous few weeks, as we've had to pass discs and USBs between us till this point as living in the arse end of lincoln, he hasnt had the net :)

Week 4

Having discussed the various ideas we have come up for in terms of style for the piece, we are currently working on creating the animation using real-world characters filmed on green screen, who are then altered in post production, and placed within our CG-world - one which we imagine will be compiled from 2d images within after effects. The style that most vividly represents what we are currently working on is that of the following piece...

Week 3.... AGAIN!

Ben has created a sample “soldier” from scratch in photoshop, with each limb and accesory being a different layer, to allow us to fluidly animate the character throughout scenes, with the emphasis being short snappy movements, such as the gun “locking and loading.”

UPDATE

Having worked with this image in after effects, we feel that the movement would very possibly look flawed and is jerky looking, and as such we’re unsure on how well we could create an engaging war scene using it, so are now looking at other options - potentially maya or preferably 3d studio max, or perhaps green screening the characters and putting the emphasis of our animating on the world in which they are placed.

Week 3

Having considered the ways in which to create this piece, we have considered taking two narratives that link together - the intention is that, as two different animators, our styles may look different and detract from the flow of the piece, and to therefore take advantage of this. One of us would work on the soldiers war, whilst a second character would be introduced, that of a young girl, or sister. She would be playing with her barbie, and as the piece progresses we would see that the Barbie from that side of the story was missing her soldier, who was at war.

An interesting piece Ive seen in terms of potential character development is embedded below. It is only a 7 minute clip from the movie, but you get a feel of both sympathy and also a glimpse of history for both characters.

UPDATE

We have considered this idea and thought of ways to work it, but come to the conclusion that, working as a pair the whole point should be working together to reach a solid final piece. Having two seperate stories could just end up crazy complicated, and look shoddy! As such, we will now be putting emphasis back on the original war, and consider bringing in a “ladytoy!” if we feel it fits once we have a clearer storyboard and script.

Week 2

Our initial concept is to create a “war” or battle piece, with toys originally representing the soldiers. The vague idea is to begin with a young boy playing in a sandpit with his toy soldiers, and then be called by his mother for dinner. As he leaves, the toy warzone is left scattered. At this point the focus turns to the soldiers, and they “pop into life” and begin their battle, untill the boy later returns, symbolizing the way in which war and the subseqeuent loss of lives are taken for granted. As it is only to be a short piece, any form of character development is going to be tricky to squeeze in without feeling forced, but we are looking to find some sort of arc for our main soldiers war, for example with him being portrayed as the lead protaganist before being gunned down just before the transformation back to toy takes place.