(21) New Idea!!!

Hello everyone, I have some good news! :D

After talking with my cousin about my plans, we bounced off ideas and I think I know what to do for the mise-en-scene for the stop motion animations! She said that instead of trying to capture the stages on a planet, I could go more abstract and try capturing the 'headspace' I'm in when I am experiencing a stage of grief. Instead of having a scene where there's a lot going on, I can keep it isolated and using lighting to highlight the feeling of what is happening. In a way, the scene will be the insides of my mind. :0 

I like this idea since I feel it'll add onto the mystery that is grief. It can feel very isolating to go through the motions of it alone, and I feel that I'm showcasing my feelings in a more accurate manner by doing this. Plus, after my cousin brought it up I think that portraying planets might be confusing for audiences to grasp what is going on. 

After deciding what I'm going to do I went to the internet to find some photos that I can use as a reference. I want to use lighting and simple figures to emulate that I am trying to depict the way my mind is like when I'm going through those stages. 

An example of some lighting techniques I could use :0

Okay, I know this is Spongebob, but this episode where Squidward is in the Nowhere dimension is a great reference as to what I want the scenery to look like!

In the next blog posts, my plan is to sketch out my plans and go get supplies. I need to get this done ASAP since the project is due in only a few weeks. Although I hate being behind, maybe it was necessary to plan out my ideas. I'll keep you guys posted. :)

(20) Change of Plans and Extra Thinking

Hello everyone. :)

Because I'm currently in spring break, my cousin decided to surprise me and my brother and now she'll be staying with us until Sunday. While I'm very very excited that she's here, that also means that now I will barely have any time to work on my project. There's very few things that I let get in the way of my work, but family is one of them. It's been very long since I last saw her and she has a lot of plans for us, so, I guess I'll put a pin on working on the stop motion portion of my project. 

While postponing production will mean I'm going to have to work extra hard later, considering how far I've gotten with designing the characters and going out to get supplies, I think I'll be alright!

Since I'm having to push back the production dates, that means I'm not going to waste the time that I have now and do my best to plan out the editing stage and shell out my production plans even further. One thing that has been on my mind is whether if I'm going to speak out my lines in my script or if I'm just going to have text appear on screen. After talking with some people and doing a bit of googling, I've decided that I'm going to have text appear on the screen. I want the audio component of my project to be strictly music, and I feel like having me speak within the project will make it cheesy (also I think hearing my voice will not make my piece too personal, I still want audiences to see themselves within my film).

I have also been recently inspired to take a different approach for the mise-en-scene my stop motion animations.  I was telling my cousin about my plans and how I wanted to tell the story, and she was asking me a couple questions as to why I was choosing certain elements. I was telling her about my planets idea, but she said "Do you really feel as if you're on a different planet or a different plane when you grieve?". The more I thought about her question the more I realized that she was right. 

I think that by using planets as the settings for the stages was not an accurate description of how it feels to me. This means I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and reconsider some of my ideas, fast. I'll let you guys know what I come up with, I'll keep you guys posted. 

(19) Stop Motion Characters

Hello! :D

As I stated in previous posts, today marks the first week in which I'm going to start working on the stop motion scenes! >:D I'm using today in order to draw out everything I need for the animations, essentially I'm making the 'frames' of my animations today. 

Drawing out the Character! >:0

In case I never fully explained how it works, I wanted to take the time and dedicate this blog to talk about what my plan is for completing the stop motion portions. When I talked with Yejin a couple of weeks ago, they said that when it comes to drawing out my frames, I need to consider how many parts I will need for a single shot, and do everything I can to simplify the motion that is needed in that shot. Taking the time to actually draw out every single frame like they do in animation studios will take me months to get it done, so I need to work on a more realistic scale (also I'm doing all of this alone, which adds to the level of difficulty). 

They also said that in order to bring "life" into my animations, I really have to focus on the emotions within my characters and give emotion to any other objects I include as well. I decided to bring out a lot of detailing within the eyes and eyebrows of my characters to do this. :)

My goal is to finish up all of the drawing by tonight and so I can plan for how I want to set them up tomorrow. I'll keep you guys posted! :D

(18) Production Day Postponed

Somtimes, life gets in the way at the most inconvenient times. 

If you have been keeping up with my posts you would know that today was the day that I was supposed to film with my boyfriend. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had a very large project due tonight so today I need to help him out instead. There's a lot of parts and it'll probably take us the whole day to finish it, so therefore my filming day is postponed. 

Because I want to take the next week to work on stop motion I suggested that we moved the filming day to next Sunday, but next Sunday marks the first day of Passover so he is unsure that he'll be available. After talking back and forth I guess our only option is to film on Tuesday the 30th. While I'm really apprehensive about moving the film date so late because that will reduce my time to edit, this change is necessary since I'll need the time to film and I do not want to rush the process. 

However, not all is lost since this does give my boyfriend some time to understand how the camera works and test it out a bit! Hopefully this will make the day we do film easier and we won't waste as much time dealing with equipment. :) With that being said I need to make sure that in this upcoming week I have to work really hard and get as much of the stop motion animation done, I'll let you guys know how it goes. :0