Sarah's BA Blog: weekend updates

thats right...just a quick post to let you know that Pixar's Up is fantastic (like you didn't already know) I had no idea what to expect from this one, after forcing myself to not read up about it or see too many visuals (frankly i think trailers all together need a total rethink so they dont spoil the best bits) Up is a truely wonderful story that makes you laugh but also pulls at the heart strings in some saddening circumstances. Beautiful design, colour (i especially love the shot above with all the balloons filling the little girls room with colour) and a poignant message from the story. A huge testament that the most unlikely of characters can work within animation.

For the love of god go see it and be inspired!

This weekend...

Saturday i consoled myself in the story...to me the story was either a case of being too complicated in terms of what needed to be modeled and created for effect, OR that the acts didn't flow into one another. We had found THE best ending, but the trouble was now to rework the start and middle so the story had action reaction consequence and made sense, not just answered a beginning middle and end. Dan Dalli's looney tunes esque suggestion was nice, but for a team of two it sadly couldn't be pulled off to a high standard and it would be going against my promise of a piece that was fully developed from a simplistic idea. No matter how good an idea is, you must keep things realistic and the film itself will have its own complications when it comes to production, let alone setting ourselves 500 hurdles to begin with. Its worth using this time in pre production to get absolutely everything set in stone so that the production phase can focus on merely creation problems rather than that of story. Mike and Daves suggestion of gags would really push the run time over 2 minutes, which again, Im not keen on doing. Its going against my objectives.

It is difficult when you feel your taking one step forward yet three steps back, yet you know the story you present is being constantly stripped and rebuilt better and better each time. As Grigsby said "your acting like its a plane crash when its only week two"...he's of course right, and I thank him and another for bringing me back down to earth. The support is tremendous and I think i'll spend many blog posts thanking all those who are providing this for me.

I spent the saturday writing out the breakdown points of our story including each different variety onto individual scraps of paper. These were then shuffled round and wittled down until just the bare elements of the story were re-found. This now needs to be developed and thumbnail and we need to decide our favorite option and now pursue it as we roll into week 3.

Sunday i collected some primary research imagery from my garden. Funny enough...our garden is actually full of garden tat (sorry mum) so it might be useful for environment research when coming up with ideas for props to be placed within the garden.

rust example...texutre might prove useful!?

I also continued my prop drawings, im trying to come up with a variety of designs for each object so we can define a style and pick out the best of what we like so were clear on what to model.

Windmills and Bird houses