Creative Collaboration-

Weeks 6 - 7

Our schedule

After settling on the concept behind the video, our group had to decide upon how to communicate the yet to be confirmed narrative inside the storybook structure that we decided upon. One of my main concerns was that as I am the only one that will be contributing to the animation process itself (asides from backgrounds and concept art), I wanted to story to be communicated in a way that would be time-efficient for me, thus allowing me to keep on top of the schedule. The main reason as to why I was so unsure about my ability to complete the task in time, was that due to the fact that I had never animated a dog before, a lot of research would have had to be taken out in terms of quadruped walk cycles, how mood affects their movements etc. 

It wasn't until I came across a clip from an old Simpsons episode, that I found a creative, time efficient method of quickly portraying a character's backstory to an audience, yet still managing to be emotionally engaging. Using inspiration from the abundance of 'I take a photo everyday for ___ years' videos on YouTube, the clip shows an animated summary of Homer Simpsons life by showing how he and his surroundings, upbringing and quality of life changes overtime through a series of still images. This means that I have set myself much more of a realistic task to produce before the deadline, as I would only be key poses of the dog that I would need to illustrate, and I would not have to worry about in-between frames aside from the opening and closing scenes of the book opening/closing. I am glad I realised this before we began work on the script, as the narrative would have had to be built around this idea, assuring that it can be told though a single camera angle across a sequence of still images, which this Simpsons clip manages to do perfectly, and manages to show a lot of gags in the process.

But we still felt that it was not yet time to come up with the story, as we thought that in order to communicate an accurate representation of what certain rescue dogs go through, and importance of adopting, we should gather research from professionals in the field. Josh, being in charge of setting up and carrying out the interviews, managed to grab us an interview via a friend on a biology course, with a woman who runs her own dog-walking company, known as 'All about the dogs'. What we hoped to gather from this interview, was an insight on dog behavior and a professional outlook. I went along to the interview and took the role of the cameraman, so we could use the footage for our making of, and refer accurately to what was said in the interview at a later stage.

We assured to have permission granted from the business to use their image in our making of

Personally, I think that the interview went perfectly, Josh had valuable questions which were answered informatively, and many topics that were brought up would without a doubt shape the story. At 12:34 - 13:02 in the video, we were given an ideal situation to base our story around, as apparently it is a common causation of abandoned dogs. The situation was that the family would have a baby on the way, therefore progressively neglect the dog more and more in preparation to the baby, who they feel would come first. 

It was not only the story ideas that became a valuable asset from this interview, as the woman that we were interviewing helpfully gave us a sheet listing how dogs show certain feelings, intentions or emotions, meaning that when it comes to drawing out key poses in the animation phase, I can accurately illustrate how a dog would react in the given circumstances. When posing my character later, I will definitely use this as a guideline.

Doggie Language

After me and Chloe collaborated on the character design, Josh took lead role in the structuring of the narrative, with me and Chloe still regularly inputting our ideas and suggestions. As I previously mentioned, we teamed up with two English language students in order to elevate our narrative structure to a more professional level. They were informed about our premise and the research that we gathered, and from that they bounced ideas from one another, whist we recorded them all and combined the best of both to create a story that we felt best accomplished our goal. This discussion was recorded for the making of video documentation.

The main goal for our story was to evoke sympathy from the viewers for our character, in order to persuade them to choose rescue dogs over breeders. This caused me to research effective ways in which to communicate a sad story to the viewer, which is when I came across an excellent video on YouTube from 'TheCloserLook', where emotional scenes in films are analysed and their effectiveness is explained.

From this video, I have learnt that despite the popular belief that in order for a character to become sympathetic they have to be relateable to the audience, instead all the character requires is for their unfortunate situations and circumstances to be unjustified in their innocent actions or behaviors, which if done well will cause the character to become sympathetic, regardless of if their situation has been experienced by the viewers. I kept this in mind when helping out with the narrative of our piece, in order to better achieve our intention.

Another element that Josh, as lead narrative designer wanted to ensure we implement, was 'The Hero's Journey'. The reason as to why he felt that this was so important was that this structure ensures that the central character goes on a journey with the audience in which they learn, adapt to and experience knew things in a flowing structure that would help keep the audience interested throughout. Personally, I was not familiar with this narrative structure before this session, as I was used to Tzvetan Todorov's narrative theory regarding equilibrium. However after seeing how we managed to shape the structure of our story using this new method, resulting in something that I feel ideally communicates our intention, it will definitely be something I will consider using in future narrative-based projects.

An illustration showing the hero's journey

Below is an outline of the story that we managed to produce, and a finalised script. I realise that this will likely change a lot as we progress from script to screen.

The Script

Chloe worked on the storyboard, roughly sketching out how she envisioned each scene would play out after the rest of the teams input, this was then given to Josh, who I helped to translate what was given into a full length animatic of the final animation. As I would be in charge of structuring the final product myself, it was essential for me to be there, as with a firm idea of how I plan to show each scene through character performance, I advised Josh on the timings throughout the project, to make sure that I would be able to fit what actions that I intended to portray in the times given with as little filler as possible. I understand this will just be used as a guideline for me, and may very well have changed dramatically by the production phase, but it was still important to see if the piece would flow effectively to the audience before we proceed to animate, and after analysing the animatic, I am pleased to say that if translated well, this would be an ideal way to pace and structure the piece. The final animatic is shown below.

A little something that I produced on the side of the main project work, was a logo to would help create an identity for our team. I separated a human face outline into three sections, giving key characteristics from our team (My freckles, Chloe's Hair etc.) to each of the three separate sections, thus representing how we are all putting in a little piece of ourselves into this project. I imagine this working well showcased at the end of our final product, as well as throughout the making of documentary.

Our Team Logo

I am incredibly glad that this project, which I was very unsure about in the previous two weeks due to a mismatch of ideas, has completely turned around in these past two weeks, as I am certain that our combined vision will combine to make a piece which we are all equally proud of, and now that all the pre-production work is close to being finalised, in the following weeks we can jump right into animating.