After the pitch yesterday, Phil mentioned some scenes to look at, what they have in common is that they belong to the Sci-fi genre, and that is what im aiming for with my animation.
This scenes will help me to redo my storyboard animatic and better play with the story structure.
In the new animatic, I will start with the arrival of the spores, to the soil, just like the arriving of an alien species on earth, such in terminator. So is nothing better to actually look at that scene for some inspiration.
In my opinion, the second arrival is working better for this animation, the camera firstly pans from the side and centers on the object, just like my zooming.
Also, the idea of a critter civilization, is well shown in the film War of the Worlds, where my next film comes from, the idea of the camera following the growth, is the same I will apply to the growth of mycelium.
Pls! watch this with no sound, as it is a redubbed cheesy version :(
For the Dispersal of the grown spores, I decided to take Phil's advice and look at some scenes of the film Independence Day, more specifically, when the spaceship arrives, aiming to understand the camera structure and movement, that helped to create a superiority of the alien civilization, here is where I added another shot on my storyboard, to create this superior effect.
I just love this film, and watching this scenes just makes me watch it again!
finally, to portray the menacing behaviour of the Growth of the mycelium, I decided to look at Matrix: Revolutions, to see how the tentacles aliens are particularly shot to create full dynamism.
I can say I was really pleased with the pitch yesterday, the commissioner Peter Klappa and Tutor Phil, as main judges/ feedbackers, it all went great apart, I was able to show all my workflow so far and receive helpful feedback. this consisted in slightly change the story structure as it was a bit shifted and the music was breaking the flow in the end. Apart from that Peter liked my idea, of creating a sci-fi, "Alien Invasion" Blockbuster. So with a green light by the commissioner Peter Klappa, I decided to develop the idea even further and slightly change the story structure.
So far this is the animatic that I presented for the pitch: (Careful! if you are afraid of earthquake, fast forward to the end, thanks :P)
After the pitch, I started to remodel it, and a new one is already made, just trying to find the right soundtrack. but I can say, works better "invasion-wise" :)
This week , we had a enjoyable life drawing class, it started as always with a warm up stage where we were asked to produce 4x 5mins sketches in different poses, For this I decided to be more expressive and used charcoal to do some mark making.
After the warm-up, we did another pose, but the time set was of over a hour, the longest time spent on a pose since we have started the sessions.
I can say this pose was really intriguing, after Chris positioned the model on the floor, I thought to myself, a lot of foreshortening, and it was in this pose were not only able to experiment our drawing skills but also build our knowledge around perspective, this was aided by the use of paper underneath the model which worked as a grid.
Here's is the shots from my storyboard, this time I decided to paint it because it allowed ,more or less, to get a clear idea of the colours im pretending to use in each different place. Also, the indication of camera positions and will help me to stage my animation clearer.
Yesterday, I sat down and revisited my idea, and I can say I wasn't fully happy with it, because to me although it add the epic feeling, it was becoming bland, so I decided to associate the dispersion and growth of the Fungi to a sci- fi type of attack, e.g the spores can resemble meteors, the mycelium growth to some alien structure. This is only possible, due to the difference of scale between the environment and the camera.
Also I did a really rough script/ plan of my animation,which allow me to understand it structure as well as plan the shots I'm pretending to use.
The animation will start:
(Establishing Shot) Forest and Mushroom in habitat. (Camera dives and zooms) medium shot of the mushroom. (similar perspective of my concept art). The spores appear coming from the mushroom towards the camera. The camera turns and focus on 1 spore and follows it delayed. When the spore hits the ground, the following camera enters the soil and arrives to the place where the spores will germinate. The spores germinate and form hyphae, This hyphaes will fuse ( in this case clash, to create emphasized action) and form the mycelium. This formation will be shown, by the camera firstly being static and the mycelium in a menacing way advances towards the camera, then it slightly turns focusing of the hyphaes, and travels with it, either interlacing with the mycelium or on the side. the camera stops as a middle distance to show the magnificent formation of the hyphal knot. When fully formed and mature (done by slightly change the colour), the soil begins to tremble and is when the mushroom fruit body starts to form. At this stage, to create a really dynamic construct, I'm aiming to when it starts to form the camera will follow around the stem of the fruit-body with a slight delay. ( quite similar to Cathedral by Tomek Baginsky). When the fully grown , the camera will continue its travel inside the gills, in there this "sea" of basidias will be perceived. The camera will zoom to focus on the basidias, this part can be associated to the, creation of troops, in Lord of the rings or Star wars, When focused of them it will show the process of Kariogamy and meiosis. After the 4 appendages will be created and will alocate the 4 haploid nuclei. This event will lead to the final part where the Spores will be released and start the process over again. Camera perceives the spores leaving and fades to black.
So it will mean that it is a process that nobody will stop, also the emphasis on the actions, to create these rather unwelcoming landscapes.
Finally, the soundtrack is pretty much chosen, I decided to go for the Soundtrack of the film, The Day Earth Stood Still- Remake, because, it has a really soft beginning, and quite early elevates and creates this really twisted and irregular notes, which can be associated to the trip inside the Mycelium. Also it reaches a climax by the middle, in where the formation of the fruit body can match quite well.
I will just continue now my storyboard and respective animatic to better visualise the idea.
This images helped me to depict my environments. I used them as reference in which could be associated to the topic. Although the book I took this images from is related to bacterias, they helped me to understand how micro organisms possibly look and How I could be able to apply my own style.
The book is the one from the reading list, Bacterias and Other Micro Organisms, it is a really helpful book and it comes with a CD with all the pictures from the book, saving you some time scanning them.
The images in the book range from a wide variety of organisms, each of them presented beautifully, either with appealing shapes or good craftsmanship.
For my animation, I want to integrate a tune, which allow the animation to have a epic feel in it. Where it will help and emphasize the actions of the process. It also will help me to create a certain rhythm to my animation. Although, I have some soundtracks in mind, I'm being a bit fussy to actually choose them. As I'm going to create, this animation in a really cinematic level, The soundtrack has to add the epic feel to it, if not it will serve as only a background music, instead of actually influence it.
One of my immediate opinions in music is a the soundtrack of the Cathedral the short film by Tomek Baginsky, Although some part I have to exclude, others by the means of editing would work quite well.
Other would be the one of the soundtracks for the remake of the film, The Day Earth Stood Still, I just found this soundtrack, I really like the submersible quality inside the song leading to a climax, this would match quite well with the formation with the mycelium creating a hyphal knot and then gowing into the fruit body.
Other would be the soundtrack of the film, Independence Day, I only liked this one because it has a epic feeling behind it.
Finally, the soundtrack from the film Kingdom of Heaven, once again a really epic feel behind it , but also the use of a variety of instruments, that create high pitches in the middle of the song really appeals to me. Some sort of irregular tune.
What a dilemma, if anybody knows any soundtrack which gives this epic/ sci-fi feel, could give some ideas. Thanks.
