For Other People

Most likely, there is going to be at least a few parts where Lisa is running past people, and not to mention the thugs (though whether they should be part of this too... I'm still debating).

I was reminded of the several crowd scenes in XxxHolic where Watanuki walks on busy streets, but they're trying to draw attention to him.  I want a similar thing to happen in my own animation.  The main difference I want is that instead of making them simply gray, I still want them to be in color (maybe washed out colors, but still in color).  Otherwise, they will have no faces, and no details.  This will work great for making her stand out and cutting down the time needed to create characters.

Two people to critique my idea...

I have two people in mind to critique my work.  I'm thinking probably Joel (from Illustration) and Meredith, since I'll be working in Toonboom.  My only issue is... does anyone know how to get ahold of Meredith?  She's like Houdini when it comes to me trying to find or contact her.  The last time I had to locate her within a short period of time, it took me a week of coming to her classes just after they had finished and her office hours only to find that she was never there.  And her e-mail... dude... she still hasn't gotten the two I sent her from last semester.  So...  Suggestions?

Pitch

Elevator Line:

A superhero tries to save a woman who doesn't need saving, and in the process begins to fall for her and question his own ego.

Explanation of Theme:

- What is the central point you are trying to make with this film?

People aren't always as they seem.  Too often we judge people based on their physical traits or how we presume them to be at first glance.  If we were stuck in an elevator with someone for twenty-four hours, would we still view them the same way as when we entered it with them.  Doubtful.  I want to take essentially two people who appear to need no one else but themselves and make them try to understand each other. I want to make them want to need each other, even if that need exists only in the viewer's imagination.  While their objective may be to understand each other, my objective is to spread that understanding into a single question.  Could everyone be vastly different than how they first appear?

- What is the central goal of the film?

Two people meet who would have otherwise not had the opportunity to.  And one ultimately effects the outlook of the other.  A sparked romance is implied.  The goal is to successfully convey that the unexpected aspects of life are sometimes the most important and life changing.  In this respect, the experience changes the hero's outlook on life and makes him want to presue an individual.

- What is the movie about in abstract terms? 

Those who are capable of change can only go through that change when they come in contact with something or someone that proves their original code to live by to be wrong.

Short Synopsis:

A male superhero with the first name Lee looks for someone to save from a building roof.  He sees a woman giving chase to a purse thief. Lee goes down to help. The woman is led to a secluded area and is surrounded by men who appear visually threatening (cock of the head, taps of a baseball bat on the pavement, etc.).  She shrinks looks around suspiciously and hero jumps in to save her.  Lee talks for so long (trying to convince them to redeem themselves and leave peacefully) that she starts beating them up herself.  Surprised, he becomes speechless. She grabs her purse, acknowledges him just slightly, and leaves the scene.  She goes to the dry cleaner to pick up her own superhero suit and he walks in to wash his own.  Just after she leaves, he decides to go after her.

Structure Breakdown:

- Who is the story about?

The story is about the superhero Andrew Lee Ricker who tries to save a woman and ultimately fails, because of his ego.

- What does the protagonist want?

He wants to be loved, but he also wants to feel like he's helping people.  So he wants to love himself.

- What is in the way of the protagonist to get what he/she wants?

Ultimately, his own ego, as well as a character that has no actual need for him is in the way of getting what he wants.

- What does the protagonist need?

He needs someone to make him actually see the world for what it is and not how he wants it to be.  He needs someone to tell him that he's not helping, that he isn't really needed, and that he needs to put his ego aside.

- What is in the way of the protagonist to get what he needs?

Again, ultimately, his own ego.  He's too busy entertaining himself to see what people are trying to make him understand.

- What is the beginning situation?

The hero is looking for someone to save. The woman he ends up trying to save is chasing a purse thief, but gets led into an alleyway where she is surrounded.

- 1st turning point

The hero intervenes when physical brutality towards the woman seems apparent in her future.

- New situation

The hero talks for so long that the woman gets annoyed and the thugs trying to harm her are getting impatient with listening.  She beats them up herself.

-2nd turning point 

He's stunned that she didn't need his help, so he asks her if there's anything else he can do for her, and she says no, ultimately leaving him speechless.

-Final Situation

He meets her again at the cleaners, but again he's speechless.  When she leaves, he makes the decision to chase after her because he just can't let it go.

Tone and Execution:


This project will be done in Toonboom. Overall, I want a simple style for the characters.

Here's kind of a basic first sketch for the two main characters.  These are most definitely going to change.  For both characters, I want their super hero out fits to look as if they've been at it a while--professional.  As for what the backgrounds will look like, I was thinking of hand-painting them with acrylic. Many professional animators use this method.  Disney is especially famous for using it time and time again:

As a result, a complete sketching of the backgrounds would probably come first, and painting them all would come later.  I want the world they are in to feel slightly faded, as if they live in it, but it's really about them and about their choices.  After all, we are talking about super heros here.

Objective:

The objective here is to work harder on body language and emotion, and less hard on length. 

Target Audience:

The target audience for this is approximately 13+.  It will include very mild violence and perhaps some sarcastic humor, as well as a theme that's not for children.




Act Breakdown:

Act I - Open with hero (Lee) looking down from the roof a building in a professional superhero outfit. A woman is chasing a purse thief down the streets of a high rise city. The hero jumps down from the roof, absorbs the impact and cracks the sidewalk under his feet before taking off to help her.  She is lead into an alley where she is slowly surrounded by men, taunting her physically.

Act II - Hero enters the alley, attempting to save the woman.  He surprises the thugs, so they aren't ready to deal with him.  He begins to talk about how they should think about what they're doing and the consequences involved.  He talks for so long though, that the thugs get impatient and the woman beats all of them up herself.  The hero is stunned.  She thanks him, seemly for nothing really, and begins to walk away.  He calls after her to see if there's anything else he can help with.  She looks back and simply says, "no," walking away, purse in-hand,

Act III - She comes to a dry cleaner, hands the lady the ticket from inside her purse.  She lady hands her a super hero costume.  The door opens and closes behind her.  She pays and turns to leave.  We see the super hero in normal clothes, holding his own costume, standing in the middle of the shop, stunned.  She walks by, greeting him, and leaves.  He looks at the cleaning lady, debating whether he should stay and get his clothes cleaned or go after her.  He turns on his heal and walks out the door.  The door closes behind him and that's the end.

POV

So I'm not exactly sure what you call this, but it's close to the kind of animation I want to do:

Theoretically, the fox is the narrator and the girl the main character, but we still follow both of their actions and care about what happens to both of them.  So, while I won't have a narrator, I was planning to have it switch off some, just like it does here.

Character Psychology

So I'm going to do something that I used to do when I was watching anime or movies back a few summers ago.  This is a character breakdown of how they think, based on past and present events and the people he/she comes in contact with.

Andrew Lee Ricker (Lee Ricker) ~

Lee has two powers.  He was born with a mutation that allows his muscles to withstand great strain, and he learned the ability to use his voice.  He's always had it fairly easy in school, living a sheltered life until halfway through middle school where he learned that he could use his mutation for the better.  Because of the life he led, he believes that every person is good, so it's actually incredibly rare that he actually ends up using his mutation to help anyone.  In fact, most of the time, he nearly talks them to death instead. He believes that he has something that everyone needs. He has encountered all kinds of people--those that think he's a prophet, those that think he's punishment from hell, people who adore him because he always has something to say, and others who just hate him because he doesn't ever shut up. Still, no one has ever actually told him seriously to shut up or made him speechless until he met Lisa.

Unlike the others, she was a woman of action, something he wasn't prepared for.  And unlike the others, she made it clear that she had no need for his words or even his powers.  For the first time in his life, there was someone who genuinely didn't need him or even really care about him.  And he just couldn't let it go.  He had nothing to say for the very first time.  But it didn't end there.  When he went to clean his suit, there she was.  And he realized that she was a hero too.  He had been given a chance to make things right, to get her name, to ask her out, to find out why she didn't need him, why he had nothing to say, and he wasn't about to let it slip by.

Overall, Lee means well.  He's just egotistical.  He believes that he's the best thing since sliced bread because he can do things that others can't, and no one has managed to convince him of anything different.  Lisa is the kick in the butt he needs to really understand the world and become a less obnoxious human-being.  He just has a lot to learn.


Elizabeth Eowyn Peters (Lisa Peters) ~


Lisa was raised by her mother, Tara, from the time she was around seven, when Tara was widowed.  She never remarried.  Tara's excuse was that she never found a man as good to her as her husband used to be before he died, so she took on the load herself, and played the part of both mother and father.  It didn't help that she was poor too, so Lisa had to learn to help out around the house.  Tara was never very talented when it came to fixing things, but Lisa was.  She was a natural.  And because it was just the two of them, Lisa learned to protect herself.  She learned fast that no man would do that for her when she ended up without one throughout her entire time spent in high school.  By the time she started college, she came across a fellow girl who had gotten herself in a bind with a gang.  She decided then and there that she wouldn't stand by and let other people get hurt when she could help them.  But in order to keep it from her mother, she would usually dress in costume.  At least it kept her name out of the papers.

Because of her difficult life, she learned to listen early on, so she appears very quiet and introverted most of the time, but she has a burning flame against injustice that flips her switch. She knows it too, which is why she became a hero herself.  When she meets Lee, she at first lets him intervene to keep her name out of the papers like before, but his total disconnect with reality spikes her nerves through the roof, so she begins attacking in her own way.  She thinks him to be handsome, and maybe even kind--so she doesn't totally hate him.  She just views him as incredibly naive. Having been completely ignored through school, she doesn't view romance as part of her life, though in some respects she desires it deeply.  She always thinks that somehow, she's done something wrong or maybe her lack of luck has something to do with how callous she can be towards people.  Even so, she doesn't actually want to change, even if she thinks she needs to.

In all, Lisa has been lonely since the beginning.  She fights and fights for everything she has because she has never experienced being with anyone who can help her.  In her mind, she believes that she's okay, but really, a piece of her is missing because of the hole left by her father and her romantic life (or lack there of).  Given the chance, she may see eye to eye with Lee.  In fact, he may be just what she needs.

Job & Demo Reel Research - Episode II

After more job searching, I actually found a job that I might actually be almost qualified for.  It's a job for an Editor, but the requirements are all things I can do: Posting #1.

Good reel of the day:

It goes without saying that Ray Chase's reel is going to be freaking amazing.  He has worked for Dreamworks and animated stuff like Kung Fu Panda.  What I really love about this reel though, is that while there's plenty of great finished product to drool over, he breaks down parts that are still in progress and lets us see the blocking animation that he's still working on, so we get an idea what his process is.

Bad reel of the day:

This reel is bad for so many reasons.  First, the animator put her storyboards in the reel right off the bat.  You don't even get to the real animation part until much later.  And then when you finally do get to her animations, they're all over the place.  All of it is made in different programs or just different media.  There is no common ground.

Job & Demo Reel Research - Part I

So, I've been job searching on five separate professional sites dedicated to animation and film and found two things in common with just about every last one of them so far.

A) "Must have 3 - 5 years experience"... Even the ones I do qualify for have this line on it.  And I'm really not kidding that they all request this.  I haven't found one yet that doesn't (even in the few that I do qualify for otherwise).

B) I just don't qualify for most of them.  This is to be expected, I guess, but seriously... This is the reason why we need to have more programs at our disposal at this school.  Many of the requirements are things that we could know if only we had it here.

But anyway.  Enough for my rant.  The bottom line is, it's going to be stupid hard to find a job.

On the demo reel front though, I've had a little more success:

Good Reels:

Beautiful display of motion graphics and very nice transitions.

Beautiful display of 3D modeling and animation.  The way this reel was layered was very nice.  Also, extra kudos for great work to show.

The format for this demo reel seems pretty standard, but I loved it mostly because it was funny. It was a great way to begin and end with the same character.

Bad Reels:

As a whole, this demo reel is actually pretty good.  That is until he/she cuts the vocals back in for the very last clip on an animation that's telling an invisible person that the character quits and to "take this job and shove it."  Perhaps not the best choice of words to pick in an animation for a reel when looking for a job.

There are some color and drawing choices in this demo reel (as well as just animation choices) that really didn't work. There was too much repetition.  As if to say, "You didn't see it the first time, did you?  Let me show it to you again."  I didn't like that.  Also the hand drawn stuff was okay, but not the best part of his work.

More to come...

In Five Years

So there was a question purposed of where I wanted to be in five years...

Ultimately, I would like to be in a VFX studio or associated with a film studio like Universal.  Before I graduate, I plan to apply to a visual effects school that is associated with Universal Studios--Dave School.  I'm not sure if I have what it takes to get in just yet (or even the financial means to make it happen since it's a private school), but if I don't I'm okay with taking a year or two detour, maybe looking at a program that I found to teach English abroad and building up my portfolio in the meantime.  I am confident that once I get into Dave school, I can get a foot in the door to an effects or studio job--even if it isn't where I want to be right away.  My ultimate life goal would be to work for Weta Digital, but that boat is likely going nowhere due to my inexperience, degree status (or lack there of), and immigration laws.  I've made peace with that and may come back to it when I'm older.  In the mean time, I just want to work in visual effects or video editing.  That's where I at least want to see myself.

Inspirations

After some thought, I think I might do the super hero idea.  It's not as complex as the other idea by far, but it will allow me more leisure to create something funny and a bit over the top.  I've been watching a bit too many superhero flicks lately, so I think it may have gotten stuck in my brain for good.  But time and time again, it seemed like the hero always had someone that they had to save.  With Spiderman it was Mary Jane Watson.  With Superman it was Louis Lane.  With Batman it was Rachel Dawes.  With Thor it was Jane Foster.  And the list goes on.

Don't get me wrong.  I love them all.  But wouldn't it be nice if the girl was just a normal person (not a super hero herself) and didn't actually need to be saved.  What if she could save herself?  Well, so I started looking for a female character who had been built strong enough to protect herself in her hero's absence.  I think I came up with a) The X-Men--who are all just as powerful as each other, b) Hermione Granger--the brainy secondary character who is more than capable of protecting herself, and b) a female Asian superhero known as Silverhawk--in this case she is a hero and the detective who wants to be the hero isn't quite up to par.

So, in that case, how about a girl who can take care of herself?  And then I came back to Green Hornet.  Man, I hate that movie.  It's mostly because the hero doesn't have a clue what he's actually doing.  But I started to think, a slightly incompetent or egotistical hero might be the reason why our leading lady takes on the duty of protecting herself.  

But why this kind of animation.  That's simple.  I've always wanted to try something with a short animated story--something that focused more on quality than quantity.  I've been watching a lot of animations from Gobelins lately, and they have been most inspiring.

Both the short natures and the fluid animations styles are something that I think would work pretty well for what I have planned.  I also plan to make my characters much more simple than they have been in the past, then I can focus more on the details of movement as a whole and less on each individual piece.