Written Proposal

EXTENDED PROJECT

Written Proposal for my Artefact

What am I doing for my Artefact?

For my Artefact, I am going to produce a 2D animation based around one of the following stories:

·         A boy who finds himself in a troubled life but with the aid of a mysterious, mythical bird he journeys on an adventure that he never saw coming

·         An old man who loses his hair along with a great loss of his wife and decides to change things by purchasing a top hat but doesn't realising the complications of the magical powers it beholds in front of him

·         A brawl between two brothers has they fight for supremacy for their fathers land but what ends up being a brawl becomes a disaster as the one who rains supreme has to cope with the loss of his brother which will ultimately result in suicide

The 2D animation will take one of those stories and combine drawings produced by me, voice acting by me and possibly some of my friends if they are willing to undergo the process and little editing effects to make the 2D animation a bit more flashy, exciting and modern. A lot of the 2D animation will be like a comic book, moving slide to slide with animations in each slide to keep things bizarre and unexpected.

Why am I doing this for my choice of artefact?

The reason for choosing such an artefact is varied. In terms of the story, a lot of the stories I have listed up above are quite bold. A lot of the inspiration for these stories comes from experiences I’ve had in real life that I want to portray in a fictional setting or simply animes and cartoons I’ve watched that have rich stories that I want to take elements from. Furthermore, I feel choosing one of these three stories will reach one of these goals, which is to use a 2D animation to convey a strong sense of emotion.

2D animation is also something I haven’t really done before but something I have a personal interest in and therefore want to go for it and learn the ways of producing a 2D animation. I have some skills the drawing, writing and voice acting field so it seems a good fit to choose a 2D animation.

The comic book slide styling of American Comic Books with the over-exaggerated feel and action of Modern Japanese Magna/Anime Comics are two elements I wanted to combine. I have interests of both, I like the thrill of Magna’s exciting moments, especially with action and I enjoy the fictional tales of them, things that you wouldn’t expect from your typical American Comic Book but the American Comic book has strengths that appeal to me greatly, how the story lines itself up and fits together. Combining these two elements is reasoning for choosing 2D animation is that I feel I could achieve this style of combing both of them better. 3D animation is quite difficult and would be very time consuming and I don’t feel I have the time nor patience to go for a 3D animation, I enjoy watching 3D animation but it’s not something I feel I would enjoy making. 2D animation is also quite traditional and brings me back to when I was younger and would draw a lot, so that’s probably a small reason why I’m stuck to 2D animation, but lastly, why am I doing this for my choice of artefact isn’t just all these points but the fact that I want to go into the research and find 2D animators and artists. Learn about them, how they produce such wonders, the tricks involved and whether I can take those things and do a good job of it as I don’t just want to produce a 2D animation that can convey a strong sense of emotion with its story, characters and more but produce an animation that’s fun to watch, exciting, entertaining and is of good quality so that people want to watch it through all the end as I feel if my audience is bored of the animation after the first minute, I’m clearly doing something wrong and this is something I want to nail correctly.

How am I going to produce this artefact?

Being that this 2D animation is going to be the biggest part of this Extended Project, it only makes sense that it will take a while to produce. To produce such artefact I’m going to have to go and do some research into 2D animation as a whole. Find out how it’s produced, watch some tutorials, take some tips and tricks on all kinds of things, look into journals, websites and books and figure how they do such things. It will be an interesting time but I also think it’s wise to look at some biographies of some quite famous 2D animators and/or artists. See what their experiences are like but also look into Manga and Comic books. Manga/Anime and Comic Books are two styles from two opposing sides of the world that I want to combine to bring a rich and interesting flavour to my 2D animation, so I will have to look at that, whilst deciding on my final story to undergo.

After looking into research, I will have to analysis and take certain pieces that can help provide ideas I want to incorporate for my 2D animation, such as how characters and settings should look, good ways to convey emotion, watching examples and see how other 2D animations from professional artists and animators do such wonders. With the Research and Analysis done, its then time to get into actual production as that with the pre-production stage which is very important to a 2D animation or any artefact for that matter as you don’t want to leave yourself clueless and without knowledge when you have a quite long-lasting project such as this.

I want to go straight into writing, have the script for the characters and how the story is going to play out over the course of the few minutes of my animation; I can then get into the screenplay section as I want to have voice acting and sounds in my game. Whilst I feel some silent animations are quite interesting to watch, it’s not a style I want to go into as I think it’s not suitable for the modern age or my modern audience.

Drawing can then begin with concept of characters as you can have a blank backdrop and still be quite fine, but it’s the characters that pull it through but I’ll have to make sure I get those right, just like the script as those are the two biggest elements for my animation is I want to convey that sense of emotion. The looks in their eyes, their facial expression, and their posture are things I’ll have to consider if I want to make that section of my 2D animation a success. However, whilst you can have a blank backdrop, they are still very important in giving a sense of awareness, so I’ll have to get the character concepts completed first, backgrounds then after and see what type of emotion or action I want the character to do over it.

I am going to draw a tile sheet, similar to those seen in comic books and fit each section in bit by bit. The background, the characters and the speech bubbles or little additional such as some sparks or fire to add some more action to it but I am going to leave these tiles blank as I will then scan the drawings, edit them in Photoshop with a graphics tablet and make the lines more bold, have the colours pop out more and perhaps use dark colours for the background as I want the characters to pop out more in each slide. With that, it’s then adding the little touches of the editing stage to produce the first draft. I’ll connect the images/scenes together using a video editing program such as Adobe Premier Pro or Sony Vegas and such the tools in those programs to pan from each slide to another, zooming in when necessary. After that, it’s importing in the voices and sound effects, one of the last stages of the animation. I’ll piece it together and once that’s done and dusted, I can replay it back, see if it works fine and export it as a video file as a first draft so I can show it to my audience for reviewing or just for my presentation. I’ll gather the feedback, primary and secondary and if there are any adjustments to be done, I’ll apply those and have the final draft of my artefact done. My artefact for my Extended Project complete.