Thursday, January 10, 2008

Ongoing project














So I've decided to re-create the Oni Ise Owo animation, because I wasn't satisfied with the first one. It was great to see through an animation production, but I feel I didn't do the story justice. There are a couple of reasons why:

-Most importantly I feel like the story failed to deliver its plot points effectively. Due to deadlines I couldn't add enough meat to the essential moments in the story. Every image needs to deliver the core story because there is no dialog or voice over.
-Loose character development. I felt like there wasn't too much reason why we should care for the artisan.
-The visual style which was born mostly from the limitations of the program (After Effects) can be expanded upon.
-There's only so much character and scene animation you can do with the paper-puppetry style of animating in After Effects.

Basically I've figured out the methods to rebuild the ship:

-I've rewritten the script
-The characters and objects they interact with will be created with a special blend of 2d and 3d animation. The style will still emphasize flatness of space, but will be closer to my original visual conception in terms of character emotion, atmosphere, and lighting.
-A new system of compositing and integration will allow me to bring in new scene elements like rain maybe and wind.
-Every single frame has to count toward delivering the story efficiently since it will be longer, but still about 8 or 10 minutes long.
-There will be a voice over this time, but it will be in Yoruba (hopefully courtesy of my Father), no subtitles. This is supposed to pull your attention away from the narrators words as a form of description. Instead it is to serve as a device for the tone of the movie giving it another layer or oral texture besides the music. Conceptually it supposed to place Yoruba in the confines of a forgotten language belonging to the Orisas (gods) letting the viewer feel like this a story of ages past.

I will post the plot synopses soon and there will be more patches and boring technical stuff on the way, but for now enjoy these preliminary sketches of the redesign for the main

3 comments:

Bryan Rollins said...

coming to a monitor near you.

WOOOOOW! that's a lot. how long of a project is this or are you confident enough to set a time table?

i'm interested to see your true vision now that you're free of the shackles of AE.

side note: are you taking animation this semester?

Shof Coker said...

No, I won't be taking animation this semester and I'm still not sure I will in the future, but the project now "free of the shackles" of AE will be a blend of several programs namely 3d studio max (for animating major characters), Photoshop, Illustrator, hand painted backgrounds,textures and designs and of course AE for the post. I'm not sure what sound program yet... we'll see. Hopefully it will all be complete by summer next year (i.e my final show). That's the dream anyway. I'll start with concept work and see if the true vision finads an outlet before I commit to the project... fingers crossed.

Shobo said...

Howdy mang. I had no idea you started the blog again. Neat looking images, I love the marks, and good to hear you're still working on the Oni se Owo: Part Deux, The Embiggening.