Sunday 2 March 2014

Story changes

Firstly I should mention that I got into ExpoTees! I'm so excited to be able to take part in that and show my work to industry in May.

Secondly, yesterday I sent off my application for a 12-week summer animation internship at Pixar Animation Studios. I have no idea how likely it is that I will get in, especially given that I am in a different country, but I put my all into every part of the application. Regardless of what happens, it was a great learning experience as I had never written a cover letter before (I learned a lot from Google), and had never made a demo reel (or written a demo reel breakdown to go with it). I hope they will see my enthusiasm - fingers crossed!

I mentioned in my last post that I got some valuable feedback from Ed Hooks on the storyline of my animation. I have spent the two weeks since then implementing some ideas to improve it. It seemed a little scary to be changing aspects of the story so far into the project, but I felt like I couldn't just ignore the flaws now that I knew how I could (mostly) fix them! I quickly drew up some very rough animatic panels to see if the new scenes fit, and asked friends and family what they thought. Since they all thought it was much better - and so did I! - I decided to go ahead with the changes.

Previously the aim of the student character, Phoebe, had been hazy. While we could see she was supposed to be working to complete some work, it wasn't a very defined goal. She also didn't have much conflict - partly because of the vagueness of the goal. I have now made the central idea of the piece that she is trying to finish for a deadline that is at midnight that night, with shots of a clock throughout the day to emphasise that time is passing and tension is building. I have made her look less cheerful while she is working out her poses and walk cycles. The main change is that the scene of her waiting on her bed - relaxed - for a render has now been replaced with her waiting at her desk, incredibly tense and impatient, with the time ticking on towards midnight. I have also changed the ending; watch and see...


If you had seen the previous versions, I think you'll agree that this carries much more weight! It allows for more empathy from the audience, which is crucial.

I obviously still have a fair bit of work to do on the scenes that are still not in linear, and then I am going to have to prioritise which scenes I want to polish up as I probably won't have time to make every one perfect. With the time I have left I have decided that my product hand-in is going to be in playblast form, meaning I can do all the fancy rendering and compositing in May, after the group project is finished and before ExpoTees.

Caitlin :)