SO- I came up with a short story. My idea behind this short story was to take an every day activity, and make it not so every day, as well as to throw in some crazy cartoon violence. I kept it hand drawn (on the computer- so no scanning), and used flash. I found it pretty easy to learn.
The short 10 second explaination of my story is character goes to a vending machine to get food, the food gets stuck in the machine after he puts his money in, he tries all sorts of crazy things to get it out, then finally at the end he gets it, but there's some sort of strange irony at the end.
My main character is a fox. Here's the concept art (he gets WAY simplified because of the strange way flash draws lines):
The item in the vending machine that won't fall out is a mouse. I decided to fill the vending machine with animal snacks instead of human snacks. Then I took it a step further and decided to add only small animals (prey items) to the vending machine- no fruits or veggies. So the final vending machine will have birds, lizards, a turtle, opossum, squirrel, etc. etc.
Here's the concept art of the mouse:
I basically have a finished animatic (no sounds) so far. I still need to work on the timing of a few things though.
It's pretty big, if you wanna watch it it'll take a while to load. I should've compressed it more or made a smaller one. Oh well. *shrug
PS. On blogger, this looks really really really choppy on my computer (about 1 fps). Idk why, it said it uploaded fine. Don't be surprised if it does it to you too I guess :P.
I've had a lot of trouble coming up with an ending on this. I feel like the ending I have now has been overdone, but I can't come up with anything better (and believe me I've tried :P). I've had everything from giant robots, bears, lions, ghosts, angels, demons, and the power of the ninja somehow enter at the end.
Well, that's it for now. I'm just gonna include my draft artist's statement below (cuz that's what was assigned for us to post here), but it's mostly already been said above.
Artist's Statement:
The concept for this piece was to take an everyday activity and make it a bit crazy (in a cartoony sense). The original idea was to make this a fake commercial for a fake product (a food item that would be in a vending machine). The main character would walk up to the machine, put in his money, enter his selection, and the snack would get stuck. The main character would then try all sorts of crazy ways to get it out, ultimately succeeding and walking off with his prize. The vending machine would come to life as a monster with big pointy teeth and eat the character as he walked off. Then the logo for the fake product would appear (the item the main character wanted). Happy music would be played.
My main character I decided early on would be some sort of canid (dog/fox/wolf/coyote), since I typically draw them a lot (and I wanted to do some sort of hand drawn animation as opposed to stop motion or something else). For this project, I also wanted to make sure I didn't do something that could just be done by a video camera and an actor in a wolf suit- so I wanted to add cartoony aspects to it. Because of this, I also started to think about changing what was IN the vending machine from just normal human snacks to animal snacks. Then from random animal snacks, I changed it to include just small animals that a fox would eat (my main character winded up being a red fox). The inspiration for the mouse eating the fox at the end came mostly from Futurama (the character 'Nibbler'), but it's really been used a lot in other places too.
To do this animation, I used adobe flash Cs3 and a wacom tablet. It's all hand drawn frame by frame for the most part. A few areas use symbols and instances thereof. I chose to do it this way because I didn't want to scan thousands of things into the computer, but I still wanted to do something hand drawn. I left it feeling a little sketchy, but not too sketchy on purpose. I just liked it that way.
5 comments:
Hey Liz, Ashlea here doing your review.
Honestly, I think your project so far is great. You really have a good grasp of animation. I really enjoy your story and how simple it is. There's nothing extra to it and you don't need it to tell the short story you have. It's a perfectly fine little humorous story. I see no problem in your ending even if others may think it's 'Cliched'.
Reading your artist's statement, I'm not sure if that's what Bonnie is looking for. It's more of a "how I made this and why" rather than an in depth analysis of the meaning behind your piece. It's not necessary to create a piece just to entertain people and make them laugh. I think you succeed in that department and I can't wait to see the line work all cleaned up and whatnot.
". It's not necessary to create a piece just to entertain people and make them laugh. "
What I meant to say after reading this over.. is It's not necessary to create a piece that is deep and meaningful. You can create a piece just to entertain and make people laugh. Sorry about the confusing. was working on this while doing other things and I'm sure I just got confused.
Kudos, kudos, kudos... what's your major again? cuz, I don't know, you seem to have the most successful animations in the entire class, and you're the only one who's not a digital art major. That's interesting to me. Anyway, I think this animation is great, amazing, fantastic, etc. and you have so much of it done already. By the time I get this posted, you'll probably have all of the frames cleaned up and finalized... I like the story, I like the characters, I like the actions. I don't know what you've decided on doing for the ending, but I'm assuming you're going to go with the idea that was given during the crit where the mouse just crawls back inside the vending machine in the end, or at least that's the one I would go with. I think you'll probably need more than the last week to get your sound in there. Finding the sounds that you want and sounds that work for your piece may be harder than you think, just so you know... or maybe not for you I guess.
What Ashlea said about the artist's statement is probably right. You should look and see how others are written. Imagine if this animation were playing in a gallery... what would be written on the wall next to the piece? Don't use "I" in the artist statement. Just write about the concept of the piece, the techniques you used, the programs you used, and maybe what you want the viewer to get from watching it. Other than that, I think you're doing just fine, and I can't wait to see what else you've gotten done.
In response to what andi said-
I have a bachelors of science in Zoology from Ohio State and a minor in computer science engineering. (Graduated last year) Yes, I know... that has nothing to do with animation whatsoever. My original plan when I went to college was to do something along the lines of digital art, but I desperately wanted to move away from the BG area... (I moved there when i was 16... not a fan of corn or soybeans, sry) Started off in Comp Sci engineering at OSU, but they were training me to be a code monkey so I dropped out of that and switched to zoology. OSU didn't have a great selection for digital art for undergrads (although they have a great graduate program in it if any of u guys are interested!)
I like animals just as much as I like doing art in my freetime, so it's all good. I am mostly a wildlife person, and I just got a job for OSU working with wild birds. Tweet tweet! It's fun!
I've worked with digital a little in high school and as an undergrad for my GEDs... so I have a little bit of experience. I practice a lot at home when I have nothing to do... although this is my first experience with animation, I never had the monies to buy flash or maya or anything :(
So, in conclusion, I can't decide whether I want to be an artist or a scientist. I'm hoping both? :P
Sry I wrote so much. I guess I realize I'm kind of a mystery to you guys, and I'm pretty quiet in class. I don't bite though, I promise.
And yes, I will be adding the mouse climbing into the vending machine in the final, as well as the little cut Greg suggested with the fox's hand reaching into the vending machine.
Okay, you're really far along on this and I can't wait to see the final version. The twists are great and definitely entertaining.
My personal preference for the ending would be to definitely have someone else begin to approach the machine. It really expands the narrative aspect by suggesting something that continues beyond what you show us, and therefore also tells us that the same thing probably happened before. Basically, you can create the illusion of an infinitely long story using a really short animation like this, just like The Diner did, if you remember that one.
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