Production Diary, Tuesday 29th September.

Today, we had our first meeting as a group. I am going to be working with Dave, Ben, and Marwan on a 2D piece. It is about the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, a creature from Aboriginal tales that jumps on its victims from trees and sucks out their blood before devouring them. It would then regurgitate the victim, albeit in a much weaker state, who would then eventually turn into another Yara-Ma-Yha-Who.

The story will be about a boy who thinks that he encounters one of these creatures, and after a lengthy chase, will discover his pursuer is little more than a common frog. Dave's idea is that this shows how imagination can sometimes induce irrational fear, an idea I can certainly agree with.

To start with, we all did some sketches for the main characters and style, and must next focus on how we want the main film to look.

Here are some drawings I did during the session

Already starting to consider the style. During the chase sequence, the animation style will resemble Aboriginal art, so will need to consider using circular patterns in place of traditional linework. 

Group project presentation

As part of our second year at animation, we have to take part of a unit called 'Animation Group Project'. As the name suggests, we have to work together in groups of 4 or 5 to create a piece of animation. In this particular case we have to create a short piece of animation about 30-40 seconds long. It had to based on either a personal memory, or a foreign myth. During the summer, we each to plan our ideas and then present them in a short presentation during our first week. The best 8 were then chosen as the projects.

I decided to do mine based around the Norse legend of Thor and the Midgard Serpent, or rather how the Norse believed their final encounter would turn out. I spent much time on the concept art, but I feel the story could have been more defined.

In our first week back, we pitched our ideas in a 5 minute presentation to the rest of our group, along with Colin and Meg, who would be acting as producers for the chosen project.

The presentation itself was interesting. It was a good experience because it gave us a good idea of how we have to present our ideas in a professional environment. It was also very good to see the ideas of my peers, and the concepts were very diverse.