WEEK 7

This week in Animation Practice we start a new project in collaboration with Oxford University.

We are going to make a small animation dedicated to re-sighted animals, i.e. animals that were thought to be extinct but decades later were sighted again.

After the meeting with Diogo Verissimo, who told us about his beginnings and the start of the project with these animals.

From the list provided we had to choose a species and start the research and development of the history of the animation.

After reading the descriptions of each one, I chose the Arakan Forest Turtle. 

There is not much information about this turtle, as it is rarely seen in its habitat but I found it very interesting that its last sighting was in an elephant sanctuary, visually it could help me a lot to develop the story. Another sighting was in a Chinese food market and I find it perfect to show the contrast between the calm of the sanctuary, the slow pace of the turtle, with the movement and the masses of people in those markets.

I spent most of the class creating the mind map, doing some research and thinking about the aesthetics of the animation. I'm trying to do different styles in all the projects I'm working on now, so in this one I'm going to try to do something delicate and with an interesting use of linework, elaborate and bright colours.

For the design of the other character I thought of making an elephant, because of where these turtles live and also because it's fun to play with the sizes and shapes of the two characters.

The audios that were provided talk about facts about the species, in my case there is not a lot of information but I have a slight idea of how I can use them.

I also had a little chat with Rachel, to tell her a bit about how the rest of my projects were going and my idea for the current one.

For this Thursday we need to make the mind map, mood board, development of at least one of the characters and a small synopsis of what we want to tell in our animation.

So during these days I will work on that and on the motion graphics projects, so I can have a tutorial with Patrick and then we can animate the assets.