Week 6 Update

I am now onto Draft 7 of my script. I did rough storyboards for Draft 5 and a clean storyboard and rough animatic for Draft 6. Draft 7 should be my last one, depending on feedback but I think I have narrowed the story down to the necessary parts.

The main difference between Drafts 6 & 7 are the following. Instead of all the plastic objects being on top of the rubbish bin, they start the film inside the garbage. That way it gives more of a sense of them being prisoners. The design of the garbage bin has been made to give the appearance of a prison.

Also, I have written the speech that the "leader" is giving with all the secondary characters answering back in unison. I'm hoping this gives a sense of motivating the characters while informing the viewer as to what's going on without having to get into lengthy conversations to spell everything out. By doing it in a motivational speech, I think it adds ambience to the beginning of the film.

I have also decided to delete the sequence with the garbage truck, rather the viewer will know it's coming through sound only. From looking at my animatic I found this necessary for the pacing of the film. Two slow paced sequences right at the beginning would have lost the audience interest so instead the first sequence builds in intensity and is followed by a fast paced sequence.

Concept Design

I am quite happy with the style that I am developing for the film. As I am working mainly by myself, it is important to set achievable goals. Therefore, I want to stay away from realistic design. I personally believe that unless you have very talented texturing and lighting, 3d animation ends up giving disappointing results. Therefore, my animation will be done in Maya but it will be Vector Rendered with very minimal shading. My main characters may have a little bit more shading than the others so they stand out more. By giving this film a more cartoony look, I am hoping that people get captivated more easily as opposed to just trying to pick out the visual flaws.

CHARACTERS & PROPS: As this film is seen from the point of view of the plastic objects they are in a sense the "good guys". Therefore, their design is more rounded to make them look appealing and cute. On the other hand, the garbage pickers and seagulls will have more sharp and angular edges.

Ok, I'm not sure what's going on but this website isn't uploading my character with the proper colors but this gives you an idea.

LOCATIONS

I have done 8 illustrations of the main locations and the colors that apply to them. Here's an example of location and charcters designs. Once again the colors are coming up completely wrong but it gives you an idea of the vectorized look. The image on the left is supposed to be gold with blueish shadows and the image on the right should be mostly black and khaki green.

I will be showing all my characters and locations this week in class. I now want to do a more finished animatic with very precise timing, limited animation, and some color. I will be recording a scratch sound in the next week and a half.

As Anton will be helping me with the modeling, I will give him some assets to model this week and get production going.

i'm getting pretty excited as I feel this film is taking good shape, both the visual and the storytelling aspects.