Storyboard and Breakdown

Breakdown

Act 1

 Inciting incident - Ringmaster shows Mindy the empty audience and the broken down circus

Plot point #1 - Mindy makes the flyers

Act 2

Midpoint - Mindy drops the balancing stick and starts to wobble/fall

Plot point #2 - Mindy screams for help

Act 3

Climax - The troupe comes together to create the human pyramid

Denouement - They use the pyramid as their closing act and gain an audience

Storyboard

Concept Art - Style and Color ideas

This was my original style that I had for my previous works. It was supposed to be styled like a coloring book or a children's book. At first I wanted to keep this style...

...so I decided to just design Mindy since I already had all of the other characters designed in this style. This is the sketch that I had for Mindy. 

But I began to think about the sort of retro style that people often used in like futuristic type drawings and began looking up not only that retro style but also some vintage circus posters. 

Also I looked up some images of the circus in the 30s-40s since that is the time in which my narrative is set. 

                                       

I then used the retro stylistic illustration and the limited and muted color pallet of the vintage circus posters to create a redesign for Mindy.

Final Project Concept

Elevator Line

A young girl challenges fears, embraces bravery, and evokes wonder when she attends an extravagant performance at Argle Bargle's Fantastical Circus. 

Explanation of Theme

Fear is often greater than the danger itself.

Explanation of Tone and Execution

I want this to have a very playful and childlike tone because 

1) the main character is a very young child

2) I want to appeal to more childlike fears like fear of clowns or the "freaks" at the circus

I'm going to achieve this by making the entire short seem like it's out of a children's coloring book with a very childlike coloration and design. 

Explanation of Objective

The goal is to mostly entertain but I do want to enlighten my intended on audience of the concept that fear is only as deep as this mind allows and that you should often face/overcome fears.

Target Audience

My target audience is mostly children at a young age that would be thoroughly entertained but also at on old enough age to understand the message I wanting to convey. I want to saw for children as young as four or five, and possibly for young adults as well. 

Final Project Concepts

For my final project I want to do three shorts all using different animation methods. The shorts will be no longer than 2 minutes.

For the first piece I want to edit Argle Bargle's Fantastical Circus so that the movements are more realistic, fix any issues, make it more appealing, and to finish the scenes that I wanted to do. This piece is mostly animated by After Effects.



For the second piece I want to do an all traditionally drawn animation. The idea I have for this is inspired by a royalty-free song called There It Is. It would be an opening for a cartoon called the Funky Bunch, a 70's based spy team. The opening would just consist of introducing the Funky Bunch members: Al-Fro, Psychedelia, and Dyno-Mike.

The third piece I want to do is a stop motion animation. The idea I have for this is inspired by another song called Fluffing a Duck.  A family of ducks walk along a stretch of land covered in holes because they are home to a colony of gophers. They are on their way to the pond. The three baby ducks constantly jump down the holes in curiosity only to be popped back up by the gophers. Mama duck scolds them and they walk sadly along. However, once again something catches their eyes and they scurry down the holes again. Mama ducks sees her babies missing and freaks out when suddenly an angry old gopher pops up and chucks the babies at her, angry they were disturbing his home. The baby ducks smile at the adventure and Mama duck is just glad they're okay.

What I want from these pieces is pretty much what I achieved with my Paint Sample stop motion animation, just a few feel good pieces that entertain. I also want to try as many different animation styles to see which one(s) I like the best. The idea to do three shorts though is a little too much given our time frame so I would love to hear which idea you guys think is best to help me narrow down my choices.

All of the music I acquired from Imcompetech created by Kevin MacLeod and are free for use as long as credit is given.

Assignment Write-up [3/5/13]

This assignment was to edit or projects into a complete and final piece. I decided to re-do mine entirely with a better camera. I also used colored card stock to make my background and characters instead of printing them out so that the colors would appear more prismatic and make the editing process a lot easier. I didn't face any kind of technical difficulties with this project and I believe it is fairly successful.

DAD - Final Project