although many bits and pieces were in place before that.
I knew roughly what the final project would be last year, when last years 3rd year were going through it, so its been something Ive been pondering for a while. Even back then i knew exactly what i wanted this project to be. I had to be full character animation, that above all else, told a story. so, i knew what step one was. Find a story to tell.
now, that's not really an easy thing, and I'm glad i gave myself virtually 6 months to get something i was happy with. At first i had an idea for a little romantic tale about an old man, standing outside a cake shop, in love with the owner but never having the courage to do anything about it. it was a nice little story, but had some problems in the middle, and would have defiantly come under the banner of mini epic.
Then i had an idea about a projectionist in a old cinema, showing classics from the silent film era, when one night, a character is missing from a film, escaped and is hiding in the projection booth. again, a nice story, and playing on my love of all things Chaplin, but overall, again, too epic.
While we're on this subject, the best book for this kind of story development is easily this:
Click it, I've linked the amazon page. Its a fantastic book, lots of first hand stuff, great reading. one of those books that states the obvious point that you always forget to remember.
Anyway, then i saw this.
Its called 'The bird and the droid' by an artist called Richard 'James Johnson', and well, wow. I first saw it on a postcard that id picked up in a cinema, and straight away it spoke to me. id had a robot story in my head for a while, but nothing concrete. till i saw that. It wasn't so much a visual inspiration, but more attitude.... the idea of a lonely robot, not understanding his purpose in existence, contrasted with something as simple as a bird, who just exists, and is entirely happy with his life. this image just spoke to me, got gears moving and ideas crunching.and a few days later i was throwing a very rough story around.
VERY ROUGH.
and not very good.
In fact, ill say it, it was shit.
It went on and on about the purpose of existence and the sacrifice of life for another being something greater than life itself. it was seriously deep. and needed a back story to make any kind of sense. it would have been about 15 minutes long, visually incredibly complex, and ended on a massive downer. it had problems.
i worked on it, got something passable, showed it to friends got advice.
And then showed my sister.
My sister is my harshest critic. she will happily rip anything i do to shreds within seconds if it doesn't work. not out of spite or hate or anything like that, but just out of truth. and it works every bloody time even though its really hard to go through.
And she did. big time.
So i started again.
And weirdly, almost straight away, i came up with something pretty close to what i have now. A few tweaks have been made, smoothing out of elements, simplifying of the landscape, cutting for time, but essentially, its the same.
SO! MY STORY IS...(drum roll...)
...called Scarecrow... for now. Its a story, set in the future, about an old robot that used to help out on a farm, but has now been relegated to scarecrow duty thanks to technology moving on. and hes been doing it a long time. so long in fact that this farm no longer has inhabitants. just a broken down house and overgrown fields. and birds. lots of birds. and after so long even a robot learns how to be bored.
I'm not going to tell the whole story (don't hit me) but the general idea is that one bird isn't scared of the robot, and steals a very important part of him -his eye. The robot gives chase, the bird makes fun, but eventually, the bird learns a lesson, as does the robot.
without trying to sound cheesy, its a story about freedom.
i think that's enough for now. There's artwork to be posted, and ideas to be shared, and it will follow soon.
thanks for reading! hope you made it to the end!
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