tbubb1
04-16-2009, 10:02 PM
EDIT: It's done! :buttrock:
Click to View!
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/pretendingtodie/LINK.jpg (http://www.vimeo.com/4641551)
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ORIGINAL FIRST POST:
Hey guys! I'm an undergraduate animation major at UMBC. For my Expressions in Time and Motion class (basically Animation II) we just started working on our final project.
The professor gave us a bunch of short stories we were to choose from and create an adaptation. The final project includes a treatment, storyboard, animatic and then the finished animation. I would like to post my progress and hopefully get some feedback!!
The only thing I've completed thus far is the treatment for my animation, which the professor said she really liked. Here it is! Please give feedback:
Cold Lady Treatment
Tagline: “Helplessly lost in an ancient forest, two warriors come face-to-face with the heart of a hellish blizzard.”
Two warriors, identified by their medieval Japanese armor and weaponry, must travel through a furious snowstorm so as to regroup with their companions on the other side of an old forest. Violent winds rip and tear at mighty trees and carry with them a tumultuous mix of razor-sharp ice and bone-chilling snow. After hours of struggling with the disorienting, frigid waves, the older of the two warriors spots an abandoned cottage in the distance. Upon acknowledging the structure, an eerie voice is carried with the wind, but cannot be identified by the soldiers. They are more interested in the possible shelter than the anonymous, perhaps imagined whispers. A quick burst of shots establishes their entry, observation, preparation, fortification and subsequent sleep within the dwelling. Now the violence of the environment has been more or less contained and the protagonists are safe, reflected by a shot of their comfortable sleep, fading to black.
A strange sound awakens the younger soldier, from whose point of view the rest of the story is told. His eyes open to reveal a blurry scene of erratic movement and cold colors. As the room slowly comes into focus, he realizes a third entity is present—the form of a woman, though she flickers about the room as though not tied to space or time. The young warrior sits up as the beautiful woman stands over his companion, who screams then is filled with a deathly coldness. The boy struggles, but is approached and eventually touched by the Cold Lady.
A violent cut to black follows, and the woman speaks directly to the man’s mind. Once he is told his life will be spared, a still of the apparition will pan across the mind’s abyss as the conditions for his survival are explained:
You must never speak of me, nor of this night.
Not to father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother, nor to wedded wife, nor to boy
Nor to boy child, nor to girl child, nor to sun, nor moon, nor water, fire, wind,
Rain, snow. Now swear it.
As the dialogue concludes, the eyes once again rip open to see an empty room with an open door. Snow blows in, and his companion has unquestionably passed away. Heavy breathing suggests the gravity of the situation as the credits begin to roll. The tension has been resolved.
Stylistically, the violence of the snowstorm will be communicated through a heavy light-dark contrast. The environment, as well as the characters, will be done in charcoal so as to give a unifying sense of life in its organic shifting of both line and value. The snow itself will be painted in acrylics on both the physical frame as well as on a transparent plane in order to suggest layers of the freezing chaos. Roughly the first half of the animation will be a collection of shots illustrating the fury of this blizzard, be it the men struggling to gain ground or simply the altering of the environment as snow is literally being dumped on and slammed into the area in a wrath-of-God-type manner. Grunting, coughing, branches breaking and yelling will all be washed out and overpowered by the heavy winds.
Inside the small hut, entire frames will continue to be illustrated using charcoal, but now midtones will be present so as to produce a sense of calm—a contrast with the energetic dark/light disparity of the outside storm. Effects required to create the illusion of a first person perspective from within the younger warrior will be generated using a combination of Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro, via basic footage key framing and inclusion of computer generated objects. The ghastly Cold Lady entity will be lacking in defining physical features for the sake of production simplicity but also to make her seem as eerie as possible. She will be painted with white acrylics to give her a texture visually synonymous with the snowstorm of the previous shots—allowing the viewer to identify her as related to the previous scene.
END
I'm working on a quick storyboard now and that will be up by the beginning of next week!
Click to View!
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b80/pretendingtodie/LINK.jpg (http://www.vimeo.com/4641551)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL FIRST POST:
Hey guys! I'm an undergraduate animation major at UMBC. For my Expressions in Time and Motion class (basically Animation II) we just started working on our final project.
The professor gave us a bunch of short stories we were to choose from and create an adaptation. The final project includes a treatment, storyboard, animatic and then the finished animation. I would like to post my progress and hopefully get some feedback!!
The only thing I've completed thus far is the treatment for my animation, which the professor said she really liked. Here it is! Please give feedback:
Cold Lady Treatment
Tagline: “Helplessly lost in an ancient forest, two warriors come face-to-face with the heart of a hellish blizzard.”
Two warriors, identified by their medieval Japanese armor and weaponry, must travel through a furious snowstorm so as to regroup with their companions on the other side of an old forest. Violent winds rip and tear at mighty trees and carry with them a tumultuous mix of razor-sharp ice and bone-chilling snow. After hours of struggling with the disorienting, frigid waves, the older of the two warriors spots an abandoned cottage in the distance. Upon acknowledging the structure, an eerie voice is carried with the wind, but cannot be identified by the soldiers. They are more interested in the possible shelter than the anonymous, perhaps imagined whispers. A quick burst of shots establishes their entry, observation, preparation, fortification and subsequent sleep within the dwelling. Now the violence of the environment has been more or less contained and the protagonists are safe, reflected by a shot of their comfortable sleep, fading to black.
A strange sound awakens the younger soldier, from whose point of view the rest of the story is told. His eyes open to reveal a blurry scene of erratic movement and cold colors. As the room slowly comes into focus, he realizes a third entity is present—the form of a woman, though she flickers about the room as though not tied to space or time. The young warrior sits up as the beautiful woman stands over his companion, who screams then is filled with a deathly coldness. The boy struggles, but is approached and eventually touched by the Cold Lady.
A violent cut to black follows, and the woman speaks directly to the man’s mind. Once he is told his life will be spared, a still of the apparition will pan across the mind’s abyss as the conditions for his survival are explained:
You must never speak of me, nor of this night.
Not to father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother, nor to wedded wife, nor to boy
Nor to boy child, nor to girl child, nor to sun, nor moon, nor water, fire, wind,
Rain, snow. Now swear it.
As the dialogue concludes, the eyes once again rip open to see an empty room with an open door. Snow blows in, and his companion has unquestionably passed away. Heavy breathing suggests the gravity of the situation as the credits begin to roll. The tension has been resolved.
Stylistically, the violence of the snowstorm will be communicated through a heavy light-dark contrast. The environment, as well as the characters, will be done in charcoal so as to give a unifying sense of life in its organic shifting of both line and value. The snow itself will be painted in acrylics on both the physical frame as well as on a transparent plane in order to suggest layers of the freezing chaos. Roughly the first half of the animation will be a collection of shots illustrating the fury of this blizzard, be it the men struggling to gain ground or simply the altering of the environment as snow is literally being dumped on and slammed into the area in a wrath-of-God-type manner. Grunting, coughing, branches breaking and yelling will all be washed out and overpowered by the heavy winds.
Inside the small hut, entire frames will continue to be illustrated using charcoal, but now midtones will be present so as to produce a sense of calm—a contrast with the energetic dark/light disparity of the outside storm. Effects required to create the illusion of a first person perspective from within the younger warrior will be generated using a combination of Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro, via basic footage key framing and inclusion of computer generated objects. The ghastly Cold Lady entity will be lacking in defining physical features for the sake of production simplicity but also to make her seem as eerie as possible. She will be painted with white acrylics to give her a texture visually synonymous with the snowstorm of the previous shots—allowing the viewer to identify her as related to the previous scene.
END
I'm working on a quick storyboard now and that will be up by the beginning of next week!