Week 5

At the beginning of this week i continued to do environmental concept work. Little did i know that later on this week there was about to be a huge changes in the story. During the last few weeks the group was becoming less motivated with the work. So before carrying on any further we thought it would be best to ask the tutors what they thought of the story so far. Dan (tutor) went through our story and said that instead of improving from the original pitch idea , the story had lost its momentum. This happened mainly because the group had so many different ideas for the story, and the director, wanting everyone to be happy, used all these ideas instead of being firm and saying "its a nice idea, but no i don't think we'll have that". Basically to many cooks spoil the broth.
So now the story has been changed and checked through with all the tutors. They agreed that it is much better than the original idea. It is more comedy driven now. The majority of the group are much motivated, including myself. Unfortunately the change does mean the all the work i have done in previous weeks on animal character designs are pointless (no jungle animals in the story anymore) but it doesn't matter because some of the work can be shown in my portfolio. At least my environment concept work can still be of use. The main change in the story is that the explorer in jungle is actually dreaming he is in the jungle and sleepwalking. The movements he makes in the jungle will relate to what he is doing in the sleepwalk. For example, he dreams that he is swinging on a vine in the jungle when really he is asleep hanging, holding on to his bedroom light bulb etc.
My job as concept artist is to know all the changes important to me. We now have second enviroment in the film, which is the explorers house at night. A style for the whole film needs to be thought of this week as well. The Director told me it would be nice for the explorer to have a pet in his house at night. A tortoise or a cat was mentioned. Apart from the pet, we only have one character now instead of five, which is much better for the group. We are all very good at modeling environments, and we only have one competent animator in our group at the moment.
Because of the drastic change, for the past few days ive been working a little more on "Cafe de Beignet". I went into college early and had a look in the libary with Ash for some reference. The group is really concentrating on the whole look of the film at the moment. We researched French Fashion in the 1950's since this is the time period the old woman and man may have grown up in. The 1950's may even be the time period set for the whole film. It was nice to help out my part time group a bit more anyway.