Final project pitch

A girl is sitting in class and is given an essay assignment by her teacher. The girl after receiving the assignment sheet isn't too sure about what she should write about. On the way out from school, a group of bullies stop her and mess with her, throwing things(bits of food and trash) at her and knocking her things out of her hands. When the girl finally makes it home, she just crashes at her desk, bummed and frustrated. She starts daydreaming about what just happened with her and the bullies and starts thinking of ways she'd like to get back at them. She sees herself shocking them with lightning, using lasers to shoot the objects they throw at her and even vaporizing one of them. This leaves the bullies freaked out and running for it. After this the girl comes back to reality, she has a smile on her face and she looks at the assignment sheet from her teacher and sees that the instructions say "If you could go back and change something that's happened to you, what would you do? Explain how and why. Must be no less than 5oo words and must have details." She puts the sheet down, picks up a pencil and pulls out a sheet of paper and starts writing.

Mid_term animation Youtube style

Title:

Dream a Little

Description:

In this video, an employee is given a ton of paperwork from her boss and is left frustrated and bummed and starts daydreaming. She sees herself in a sword battle with her boss and just when he has her pinned, she comes back and takes him down in a very unlikely way. With that, she feels better and starts on her work.

Tags:

"Adobe After Effects" daydream "sword fighting" boss battle paperwork

Jack Myers Lecture Notes

• Worked in animation and motion graphics
• Moved to New York in 2000
• In 2001 he and his partner Matthew Robins launched "Art Fool"
• His main motivation is to provide inspiration to students
• He is from Hot Springs Arkansas.
• He worked on a lot of movies in high school.
• He was a former student of MCA
• He ended up switching his major to Illustration
• He didn't plan on being an animator when leaving school
• He got a job at Kinkos and was hired as a designer and he designed logos
• He later decided on working on an animated short
• He did often feel like his work wasn't any good.
• He sent in a piece called "Food" to a film festival and later got an email from PBS asking if they could show his film.
• He later got a studio job at Curious Pictures
• Today he is a freelance animator
• His partner Matthew Robbins worked with Martha Stewart magazines.
• Advises on taking risks because you never know who will see you work and who will discover you.

Creative Commons mini essay

"Creative Commons" is a organized website that allows more access of the internet while keeping it safely in the copyright standards. According to "Creative Commons", the internet is meant to allow access to programs easier, but the use of copyright and social systems limit that freedom as well as making it difficult to easily just "Cut and Paste". "Creative Commons" works with "stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation." This system has set up a set of copyright licenses that allow access to programs while keeping it in the "all rights reserved" bracket.

If this website is what it says it is,(not that I have any doubts or anything) it could make it easier to do searches on the internet. A few times before I've had worries of looking and using information that shouldn't be used in homework and that limited my choices in research. Hopefully this website would make it easier to do so and let me be able to do my work the way I would want to.

2nd Crit-on-crit for midterm

Lauren Willoughby

Project#5(midterm) 3/24/11

Major suggestions

• Add more action and drama to the sword fight scene
• The fantasy transition is bad.
• Adjust the movements of the girl reaching for the paper.

I agree that more action is needed and I will defiantly see to that. I will also figure out the movements and transitions as well.

List of revising plans for Midterm

Most needed adjustments

• Change the first fantasy transition. Lose the dissolve and try something more believable.

• Add MUCH more action and drama to the sword fighting. Particularly more movement in both warriors bodies and not just their arms and swords.

• Add a scene where the warrior girl looks like the boss warrior has her on the ropes.

• Fix the movements of the worker girl when she's moving across her desk to take the sheet of paper. Don't make it look like she's levitating.

• Don't make the scene where the employee is reaching for the paper sheet too long.

Other necessary or greatly suggested adjustments

• Give the boss warrior a happy, but evil expression and an embarrassed expression.
• Adjust the boss warrior with layers where his pants can fall down and reveal humorous undershorts.(White with big red hearts is the first choice.)
• Give the warrior girl a scared look again.
• Put the warrior girl into a position where she can launch a surprise attack. Perhaps behind the tree and let her leap out and attack
• Add a red apple to the employee's desk and let her poke at it with her letter opener.
• Let the employee play with the letter opener longer.
• Cut to black at the end of the animation.
• Add a title scene at the beginning of the animation.

Crit on Crits for mid-term

Lauren Willoughby

Project # 5(midterm) 3/24/11

Major suggestions

• Too slow. The pace needs to be faster.
• No arc in the sword fight scene.
• Needs more "oomph" to it.

I agree with the above.

I understand that my animation needed to be faster. I should've known better, same with the sword fight. So I defiantly worked on making it faster and I worked on making the fight scene.

Assignment Write up for Midterm animation

Lauren Willoughby

Project # 5 (Mid term)

Dream a Little. 3/21/11

Synopsis: An employee is given much paper work from her boss and feels overwhelmed. At her desk, she's still upset of the amount of work and starts daydreaming. She sees herself as a small warrior in armory and sees another warrior who resembles her boss in red armory approaching her and giving the en garde. She raises her sword, then suddenly confident she leaps and swipes the sword out of her opponent's hand and she gets him to surrender. The girl comes back to reality feeling better and confident and she takes the first page from the paper stack and starts working. The audience will also notice that the sword she had in her daydream is propped next to her desk.

Intent: I want my audience to get the idea that sometimes fantasizing and daydreaming at the appropriate moments can help a person relax and often people view themselves in situations where they always win and that can sometimes give one the confidence to accomplish their tasks.

Source: I daydream often myself and it sometimes helps me relax and calm myself in tough situations and I've often seen cartoon characters do the same.

Theme: Fantasizing can help people escape their troubles for awhile and sometimes can help them overcome them.

Problem areas: I really want to make my drawings of my characters better, but I'm not so sure how. Like I'm not sure if I should add more detail or if I just need to practice more. I would just like some specifics. Plus another problem was that some of my layers would have masks when I didn't even use the mask tool to create them and that became a frustration.

Film Strengths: I think I got my point and theme across and the effects I used also worked out.

Character_designs

Background_ideas

Mid-term Storyboard

Mid Term Pitch Presentation

I've decided to an animation on a daydreaming character who finds peace when stressed under work. The short starts, a female desk worker is given a lot of paperwork from her boss and she's frustrated and overwhelmed by the amount of work she is given. The scene cuts to when the girl has returned to her desk in her office and she's again, frustrated and holding her head in her hands. She looks up toward the ceiling and starts daydreaming. She sees herself as a medieval like warrior who is approached by an enemy warrior who resembles her boss. The two battle each other in a sword fight in a rain storm, with the girl coming out as the victor of the battle when she pins her enemy to the ground. The weather also changes from stormy to sunny as well. When the girl comes back to reality, she has a smile on her face and she feels relaxed and the animation closes with her taking the page on top of the stack of paperwork on her desk and she begins working.

What I'm trying to make clear is that sometimes people tend to fantasize to help them escape from their problems for awhile and it can sometimes help them overcome them. In a way I think that fantasizing can be a good thing because it can help one relax and sometimes help change a situation from a bad one to a good one.

I do intend to draw my backgrounds and characters whether on photoshop or on paper, then scanning them in. I do also have the idea of using the rain and lightning effects for the storm sword battle. Of course I'll also have the characters walking and actually sword fighting as well.

This whole thing also really relates to my research because fantasy and in a sense daydreaming and how it can benefit people in certain ways is what most of my research has been over.