Telling Tales Production Diary Week 3

Sunday/Monday - Storyboards, neats. Having gone through and finalized our story idea i took the role of neatening up our storyboards so that they were more clearer and explained the scenes/ situations an what was going to happen in the story.

The first few shots are establishing shots that show the interests of the characters, trying to get their dorky personalities across using their rooms as well as focusing on the visual comedy aspect of their room. The third and fourth shots further cement their differences and their hate for one another with the room divided down the middle. The final shots showcase their personalities, showing how they care not for their mother in the photo and are solely focused on themselves, I like these shots because with out the characters saying anything we have been able to introduce them and their characters.

Now the series of events that lead to their eventual downfall begins. It starts with the Wizard Brother (W) crossing the line and drawing a magic circle angering the scientist (S), so in response S tries to get back at him bye throwing something of his over as he is petty and hates backing down. While this is happening W picks up a chicken to sacrifice so that we establish early on where he gets the chicken later. We follow S over to his side of the room where he picks up a flask off his desk.

The look of the animation goes really detailed similar to the overly detailed images in sponge bob as the camera gets closer to his mouth as he tries to drink it to build up suspense to something big happening but is then stopped by an abrupt SLICE sound which makes him jump and when he turns around the camera zooms around stopping on W. He is holding a chicken head with falls off and bounces and rolls like a penny then squawks violently even though its beheaded.

W Throws the dismembered body into the air and it hits S in the face as he flies off This prompts the two of them to get really angry and approach one another stepping into the previously made magic circle. The chicken continues to fly around the room knocking things over while the magic circle lights up. The chicken hits the light in the middle of the room and drops to the floor, finally dead.

The brothers stop arguing and look down with blank expressions at the chicken corpse. The circle and room is engulfed in light and when it clears they have become an immovable blob. then a time transition happens and the poster falls off showing the painting, so they gained immortality but could do nothing with it.

Clothes design - Something that my partner picked up on was that my character didn't have anything that was funny to look at while theirs has a t-shirt with a stupid science joke on it so i let them have free rein over the clothes design for my character to try and come up with something different.They looked at more Larp clothing and created a lot of variants, but the key point we noted was that the ones with hoods looked better than the ones with hats so we moved away from the pointed wizard hat to the idea of him wearing robes, so i took the centre design further with the help of my partner.

My partner really wanted nipples out with an open shirt but it was a bit awkward to position so i settled on drawing moobs for the visual comedy. It was all for making him seem as dorky and uneducated as his brother. when my partner was looking at LARP gear there was a lot of mesh clothing so they felt the characters clothes needed to look borderline wrong so cross hatch drawstrings over the chest and belly.

                                     

Tuesday - With the newly refined design i went about adding colour. However i didn't really have anything to go off of so i initially started with very drab colours similar to the LARPing gear. but this made him very boring and when i showed the palettes to people they said nothing really stood out.

As nothing stood out i tried to make the general colour and hue much brighter overall but muted a few others as well as tried secondary colours. For the most part they looked better but were still fairly dull and were also very reminiscent of Link from legend of zelda in a few of them. But again nothing jumped out.

Wednesday - After showing my colour palettes to my partner They agreed it was still very drab and boring. We came to the conclusion that this was because of the overall shape which was very boxy because of the robe but we didn't want to go back to the wizard hat. We tried comparing the characters and my partners character was very much broken up by hair and clothing so that it wasn't so boxed in. So we tried redesigning him with hair similar to my own to break up the shape and had the hood down. We also went with an open jacket showing a bare chest to try and get his douchey character across. As a character it was a better fit fro him to be an occultist rather than a wizard as it didn't come across as obvious as wizards don't actually exist but you do get occultists, this made it a lot easier to come up with a new design for him using something based in reality.

Thursday - With the colour palettes for the new design i went off of how my partner had done their colour palettes and didn't restrict myself to natural skin colours even adding colour to the eyes. As i went along i felt dark robes were needed but the skin could be really ridiculous in comparison. Keeping the mesh idea in the form of a shirt with a bulging stomach and a pentagram and robe we felt this made him look like an occultist.

Friday - However when talking to people and showing the designs it was brought to our attention that the character didn't quite make sense. In the fact that it didn't get his personality across and the hair didn't make sense either. He didn't look like an occultist with it, nor did he look particularly like someone who thought what he was doing was cool so it was back to the drawing board. I tried a few hairstyle variants but they didn't fit onto his head in the right way. The best we found was a bowl cut which made it seem like he got his hair cut at home so another shut in element from the whole still living with their mum. But we decided to give that haircut to my partners character as mine had a few other possibilities. One being a fedora the coolest of the uncool hats but also a trench coat with that as well. These got his personality across but not his occultist obsession so we also came up with the eye make up and kept the mesh shirt and pentagram but these features didn't match with the fedora and coat.

Sunday - Taking the different ideas for his outfits i separated the idea for the hat and trench coat from the mesh shirt and robe so that the design didn't look like a mess. The fedora and trench coat designs were becoming too boxy again and they didn't show his occultist obsession. But with the robes and mesh shirt i was able to break up the boxy shape and make him look very stupid. I showed the design to a class mate who didn't know what his personality or interests were and he described the designs as a person whose a beginner, wannabe occultist, like he doesn't know what he's doing which was great as thats exactly the personality of this character.