more ideas

.....after speaking to Alan i realised that i really needed to think of some further ideas. Ive managed to get myself fixated on this particular song, as i feel its so perfect for an animation. i mean this as it creates alot of atmosphere and invokes emotion. I still really like the idea of this female and male seperated scenario, partly due to the music, and so ive been trying to think of further ideas using this theme.

I thought about how it would work if there were no people involved and the story was infact about two seperated toys, for instance in a shop. Possible ideas for their seperation could be:

• damaged, so the toy would be awaiting repair
• being sold, so the reveal would be that it had been packaged/giftwrpped
• disguarded or lost
• moved out of reach for the other toy to get to

Ive been trying to think of toys that would lend to this eerie theme and yet not be scary as you would need to be able to feel sorry for them, and ive come up with a few more thoughts:

• jewellery box dancer
• china dolls
• china clowns
• jack in the box
• hand puppets/puppets (although this probably wouldnt work for the main two characters as they will need to move towards each other and dance and with the handle to make them move they would be anchored to the floor)
• wind up toys

There are a few toy shops that are local to me so i will go to them tomorrow and have a look for possible ideas and maybe further inspiration.. and then i will be popping in to see either Alan or Phil to discuss this idea further. Im still brainstorming and developing my ideas further and so by the morning hopefully i should have more to add to my ideas list.

By using toys, especially china toys it still allows me the safety of keeping them quite slow. I feel that this type of animation, where in the joints and style of movement are physically limiting, would play to my strengths as i would b able to keep the whole animation under control and safe. I do not want to screw this project up - I'm not scared of a challenge, I'm scared of taking on something and to far down the line struggling.




Some other thoughts i had were maybe the story is of the jewellery box dancer and you see her memory through the mirror she dances in front of, almost as if its being projected. As the viewer you go inside the mirror and see her story and at the end return to reality and see things as they are now. Maybe a pssing of time has changed her or the box or its environment?

......hitting the toy shops tomorrow, i hope noone thinks im too strange a person taking photos of childrens toys!