Memory Project - Part 1

As suggested by Jared (the new commander in chief of animation at the ECA), I'm going to post production progress of projects here, along with a bit of commentary about my thought process.

First up is the memory project, where we each record an unrehearsed 30ish second audio clip of ourselves speaking about a memory and then animate visuals to go with the audio using any technique(s) we chose. In my case the memory that came out was about my first pet - A rat called Marzipan.

Thankfully, I had a fairly clear idea of how I wanted to animate it. Since I didn't say anything particularly interesting, and there was no real story in what I said, I needed to find a way for the animation to entertain the viewer. To do this I chose to exaggerate the rat's exploits and, in doing so, to make him the lead character of the film, rather than myself.

The first step (after listening to the recording once or twice) was to sketch out some rats to try and pin down how I wanted him to look. I did these without reference to keep them loose and kept in mind the poses and movements that I wanted to use in the animation.

After that, I scanned the pages in and made a very rough animatic to make sure that the timing would work.

 

Next up: pencil tests.