Friday, 28 January 2011

Week One

This week was all about research and design.
Alex and I started out by visiting some local woodlands to get some good refference for the set.
Later on in the week we visited the Potteries Museum in Stoke and looked at all the stuffed animals they had there.
I gave Alex a brief outline for what I wanted the Badgers and the Fox to look like and he set about designing them. Also through the course of the week a new character came about. A little jack russel dog, imaginatively called Jack. Jack was thought up as a way of explaining why the man (now named Barney) was in the woods to begin with, he was walking his dog.

This week we had our first team meeting. Alex Young, Tommy Grainger, Jon Colenso and I all met up and discussed who would do what within the enitial stages of the project.
We agreed that Alex would be in charge of the Badgers and Jack, Jon had the Fox and Tom has Barney. I am in charge of getting the storyboard and animatic ready, and recruiting 2nd years.
My first port of call was Adrian Tooth's office. Ade has agreed to draw the storyboard for me so I can make it into the animatic.
For now, here are some pictures of the research and the designs we have done.












Sunday, 2 January 2011

Cast and Crew

Happy New Year people!
Here is a first draft of a cast and crew list. I've split it into 2 sections +25 and -25. This is because of 2nd years assistant module and also because Tony mentioned that as well as our own project us 3rd years have to spend at least 25 hours on another 3rd years project.

+25 hours
Lead Director - May Jay
Art Director - Alex Young
Character Designers -
Lead Puppet Maker - Alex
Additional Puppet Makers x2 -
Set Designers -
Set Builder - May Jay
Additional Set Builder -
Lead Animator -
Additional Animator - May

-25 hours
Storyboard Artist -
Costume maker -
Assistant Set Builder -
After FX -
Sound and Foley -
Credits and Titles -
Editing -

More positions may open up as the project evolves so watch this space. But if you are interested in any of the positions here, or if i've missed anything out, let me know. Send me an email or comment on this post saying what position you are interested in and a link to your work to show me what you've got!
Thanks everyone and see you all soon!

Sunday, 19 December 2010

Congratulations!

If you are reading this then that means you have been specially selected to view this page. It's not like this project is top secret or anything but I wanted to keep it all professional and accessable to people.

To give you the jist of things my name is May Jowdh and I am a third year stop-motion animation and puppet making student at staffordshire university.
I have named myself lead Director of my third year project and am using this website to help plan and organise all the things I need.
To begin with I want to build up my cast and crew for the movie, I will do this by posting various vacancies as the project moves on. As people start to join, I want this page to be like a notice board for everyone on the project to have their say and upload any ideas and comments they have about whats going on.
The process of applying for a vacancy will be very similar to how you would probably apply for a real job, tell me what position you are interested in and send me examples of your work, eg a show reel, photos, links to vimeo etc.
I want everyone involved to feel like they have a voice in whats going on.

To start us off I will give you a synopsis of the film:
A roughly dressed man is walking through a forrest when he stumbles upon a tree that has money for leaves. In his excitement he stuffs his pockets with the cash not noticing that he drops his wallet. As he skips away through the forrest a fox slinks out from behind a tree and tutting takes out a clipboard and pen, puts on his specs and inspects the tree, counting the missing money. noticing the wallet on the ground he picks it up to discover the mans name and address. using a fallen log as a desk, the fox writes a letter to this man.
We cut to this mans house where he is extactly installing his newly bought widescreen TV and luxury sofa. A letter is posted through his door, a letter covered in scratches and paw prints. confused the man disreguards this letter and throws it away, days past and more letters, similar to the one before arrive. still unable to decifer the paw prints the man ignors them until one day he gets a knock at the door. The repo men, or badger baylifts have arrived and swiftly take away the mans sofa and TV leaving him cowering in the corner. the last scene is the animals in the forrest trying to plug the TV into a tree. the moral of the story is nothing in life is free, even if it grows on trees.

over the christmas period I will make a list of vacanies and upload any enitial storyboards or artwork I produce. If you are interested in this project, then please dont hesitate to make your own character designs etc, because like I said, I want everyone to have a voice.

Keep checking back for up dates,
May