First thoughts...

This is my penultimate project for this degree so I have to make sure I play to my strengths and get a finished off perfect animation. A decision that I have made is that animating, walking talking people at this stage would be a bad idea as this is not one of my strengths however, modelling is. The idea that I came up with, I feel will play to my strengths and still allows animation but at a lesser risky level for me.

I first had this idea when I heard a track by Lenka. It is off of her new album entitled Lenka and is track 10, entitled 'like a song'. It is a seemingly calm song although slightly strange. It is a love song about a couple that have been separated although, like a song he remains in her head that she cannot stop singing - the lyrics, 'rewind back the time' are quite important to this story. The lyrics are pasted below:

youtube link to audio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYQwbRsFPk

The story is about a Victorian cruise ship (absolutely not the titanic) and the tune as you will see from the animation is from a jewellery box. The jewellery box is filled with black and white photos and Victorian jewellery, due to the time period of course. The only alteration is that the jewellery box has a mechanical dancer inside it that once opened dances. Instead of just the normal spinning in a circle i want to make the dancer move more, although still mechanical have the possibility to move from the waist and shoulders and elbows knees and hips and ankles – if you could see clips from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the toy box scene, the dancer would move in a similar way.



I want to keep all the movements quite slow to match the piece of music as well as the eye contact with the dancer and camera occasionally to make it seem as if she may be real.

The whole animation would start looking at a ticket stub for the cruise ship that you follow through a somewhat quiet and eerie cabin. Eventually it slips under the door it belonged to, 625. When inside it then that you come across the jewellery box that the camera pans around, then the photos piecing together the story that it belonged to one of a couple and was given as a gift. Then at the very end almost as if a smoke covers the scene, it all is revealed to be at the bottom of the ocean, everything old and covered in limpets and underwater creatures. Then the camera pans out.

This is just my initial idea, and very very initial quick story board to get my idea out of my head and onto paper.




Below is a selection of images currently running through my mnd, collectively shaping the style of this animation.