Funny In 15!

Another task we've been set this semester as a year group is to create a 15 second animation that has to make people laugh. Now I don't know about you but I consider myself to be a pretty hilarious individual just not always intentionally. Trying to make people laugh is the hardest thing in the world, especially when they know its what you're trying to do. I got put with Elf and Sammy, 2 people I hadn't worked with before but get along with well so I was happy. It's nice to have new inputs and views, it means you see things that initially you would have missed. We had a few ideas but Elf came up with one we went with as it was simple and fit into the 15 seconds well, it was just to do with a tree falling on a cow basically, but in our heads we tried to set it up in an amusing way. Here are the anamatic/storyboard boxes I drew up for elf to edit into an anamatic.

 

 

 

I hope from this you can understand what the plan was, on reflection we didn't actually like the idea, and didn't feel that it reflected our humor at all. We didn't find it funny so there was no way in  hell we were ever going to be able to put the energy into it to make other people find it funny.

 

Here was our original anamatic -  

 

 

We surrendered to this idea, and left it here, went away and had some thoughts. Elf came back to us with an interesting idea. It was nearly crossing a line but not really at all because this is animation and we can do anything we want and people don't care because its cartoons and no one takes cartoons seriously, anyways... right??

 

So, here is our new concept, its funnier i'll give him that, and i'm all for going with it!

 

I think its funny, anyway.

 

Sea Rescue Project.

For our final group project last year we were given sound snipets and then told to animate to them, they were stories of rescue at sea. We chose eventually to go really dark with ours and kill off a couple of children, to put it bluntly.  We never finished the film because of post production issues.

We chose to do ours in cut out style as there is something really charming about it, I drew out the anamatic after Paris and I deliberated over the shots, we got this thrown together quite quickly and after talking with ann made some massive character changes and plot changes. With the German Expressionism influencing our film with other animations such as the Cabinet of Dr Calagari I went ahead with character design and drawing up the waves while Paris did the backgrounds. We did all the character animation in the stop motion room green screened under a line tester, it was a fun but time consuming endeavour. Paris and I then edited it all together on After effects and Andrea tried to put in some 3d smoke on Maya, some issues were had with this but in the future i would like to get it finished. I also tested out some faces with toon boom.

Here are a few of the shots, as i said it was never finished so sadly there is no whole film to watch.

Atmospheric..

Spoiler, they die. 

Probably my personal favourite. 

You know what, i was pretty chuffed with that font! 

So there you go, something to waste your eye energy on. 

Pirate story board!

We were given 3 scripts to choose from to storyboard, a scene from Nightrider, One about a badger and a zoo, and lastly some Pirates I chose the Pirates because i thought they were the most fun, needless to say it is perhaps easier to draw a car over and over again than it is a group of pirates but hey, lifes not always about the easy choices, right guys... Anyways! Here is my finised story board acompanied by the original script.

 

 

deck. The crew are crying out and running to their action stations.

The ship is lifted high on a wave and plunges down into the trough. Waves crash over the deck and wash into the hold where treasure is piled up.

The Captain comes running out of his quarters and drags himself up the stairs to the upper deck and the steering wheel. Rain pelting down, high waves looming on all sides and the ship rocking violently.

CAPTAIN (shouting)

All hands ahoy! Square the main sail! Lower the riggin! (He wrestles with the wheel) Swing us through, lads or we’ll all be sleeping on the sea bed with the fishes tonight, so we will!

SAILOR’S VOICES

- The ship’s too heavy in the water, Cap’n!

- She’ll never make it to port!

 

The ship starts to turn but as it does so a huge wave hits it side on. It begins to keel over and is lost to sight behind the mountainous waves.