There was once a girl called Jess Sturich

A while back I came up with this idea for a final film (I codenamed it "Jess Sturich", don't know if I mentioned it) that basically told the life story of a teenage girl, Jess. She's is a subject of our 21st century society's judgements and double standards and has her resulting decisions scrutinized by a senient being dubbed the voice. Insecurities about her friends and pressures from men colour her choices in a way that all of us would react to, and that's brought underneath the microscope. It's a film discussing religion, society, the two sides to every person and the everyday choices we make.

So, yes, I'm not doing that anymore. While (in my opinion) a great idea to try and portray, it's a long idea to set-up and deliver, while doing the premise any sort of justice. When putting together an animatic of the entire piece with images and script, the film came close to 12 minutes long, an endeavour far exceeding the constraints of my time. In order to come out with a film for the end of the semester, I need to either create a new story with my current honest of characters, or condense the plot to around 1/6th of its current state. The drawbacks of either choice being needing to spend time recreating pre-production elements or not being able to tell the story in a fair way.

Other aspects of this project which have been impacted is the hunt of the voice actress and the music for the film. The voice actress search has been fruitful and positive, some very good applicants have approached me and making the decision has been tough. However with the script undergoing revisions again, their input can't move forward. The music has been less successful. The music artist I was working with, acquired at a Animation/Music collaboration some weeks back, has fallen through and backed out of the project citing personal issues. So the hunt begins again for someone willing to add their musical talents to this undergraduates final film.

And there's the update. I'm trying to get into the habit of updating this blog weekly, I just need to remember the time I scheduled out for it. Thank you internet.

Jess: The Set-Up

Ok, so I'm going to start going through different elements of my final film. Some aspects will more developed to make the film while others may just be simple considerations. And I'm going to start with the Pop-Up Book setting.



 There's a shot from the storyboard displaying the book. It's made from about 60 layers of flat rectangular planes arranged to make a 3D book. Took a couple days of arranging and nit-picking (over an unnecessarily long period of a few weeks) to finish up and here's the result 



   I had a vision of how events would take place across the surface of the book. Through a  system of rooms, which each room containing a different environment and appropriate characters. There'd be either 2 or 3 rooms and Jess would walk through them as she recounts events. So practically realising them was the next challenge, keeping in mind, that the pages would turn. Foldable environments were key.



   But I quickly realised (as well as other people) the the center parting may have proved a problem, the dip in the pages is quite noticable. I thought about embracing the crease and having a running joke of having the characters visibly jump over the gap whenever the time came. I thought that would further cement the idea of the book and add a little more humour (if people didn't see the space and fell in accidently, for example). But that didn't pan out, because basically, I needed a floor. Also the space available with a three room set-up wasn't enough, so 1 or 2 rooms on one double page spread is all I'm allowed.



Then it came to actually designing the locations. The above ones are the initial university kitchen and the school corridor. You can see in the school passage on the left through the doorway the pink wall. That doorway is the practice method of handling that mechanic of moving through rooms. I plan on using camerawork to minimise the presence of other rooms to keep the focus on the current location. I figured that doorway is way too large.



This is the current university student house setting in development. I think the colours are good, suited for a calm living room environment. However it feel quite bare, in need of an Ikea visit or two. 

12 days of Universitmas

It's been just a couple days (3 weeks) since my last post, so I felt it's about time for an update. At this very moment in time, I'm sitting on the cusp of week 12 of this semester. That fairly tedious information until I mention that the semester is 13 weeks in total, which means, as one can imagine, hand-in dates are looming, tensions are rising and haphazard explosions into lyrical verse are at an all-time high!

On my personal basis though, remember how I expressed before about how I wasn't happy with the place I was at in my work? Well I feel a little better on that front now, having gone a little bit in the way of rectifying that. The idea for my final film, 'Jess Sturich', was pretty locked before I returned to uni this year. I'd even sorted out my storyboard by the beginning of september. This put me in a better position than a lot of my class before the year even began. So with that sorted, I didn't really consult my lecturers with it, instead letting them get on with other students and focusing on the other projects we have. It was only until about week 7/8 that I properly went through my story with a lecturer and was given an honest evaluation of the impossibility of my idea. To say the very least, that meeting didn't go according to plan and sat me behind of schedule, going some of the way to prompt that post from earlier. However since then I've been prepping the pre-production elements of 'Jess Sturich' like finalising a doable story, character designs, colour schemes, a storyboard and getting some of the way through a script. While I'm not in a perfect place, and there's still a lot to do, I feel in a better position now.

All this probably goes some of the way to explain why I haven't had the time to post anything. I've been working pretty hard on a live professional brief as well as and devoting some time to our dreaded dissertation. It has been a busy few weeks. But why should you have to take my word for it? Shouldn't I put up some proof of my labours, huh? That's what you want to see really. Well...that's where I have to let you down. An excerpt from a partially completed dissertation would be boring. Posting the storyboard for 'Jess Sturich' would be even more boring and I'm not even sure how much I can say about the professional project (even though I'm probably being far to particular for my own good). But rest assured, soon a torrent of imagery will come, bear with.

But in the meanwhile, here's a couple videos I found for my very own University of Wolverhampton. I think they're in the same vein as University of Lincoln adverts. They look pretty fun!

Wolverhampton University Ad from Charlotte McCabe on Vimeo.


Wolverhampton University Viral from Patrick Fowler on Vimeo.


University of Wolverhampton - Viral Advertisement from Graham D. Lock on Vimeo.

Pop goes the Lichtenstein

I wanted to post some research sketches I've made in preparation for my final film codenamed: "Jess Sturich". I've been looking into the style of Roy Lichtenstein a famous American artist known for being a big figure in the art movement called Pop Art. I don't know if 'movement' is really the word for it, since it was a pretty big advancement in the way art can be produced but it's greatest cultural impact was providing an easier way to print the Funnies in newspapers. Regardless, we've all seen this kind of drawing before and I've always enjoyed it, but that may be my love of cartoons talking. And now I'm in the position to replicate it. So here's some initial sketches to help me get the style down. First I tried drawing images already out there:

Then I tried to draw myself in the style. Beware, the results are horrifying.

Using these I'll work on character designs for the characters in Jess Sturich.

Half-Time

I worked out that today marks the halfway point for this semester. Currently I'm in week 7 of a couple 13 week modules, and with Wednesday being the midpoint of the business week, I'm now closer to the end than to the beginning. What a scary, depressing thing to realise.


On review, I think I've spent my time as wisely as I could and I've learned a little bit, but on retrospect of my progress is, I don't feel satisfied with where I am. The workload got very heavy immediately and juggling the several balls that were thrown my way left my final film (the project I most want to work on) on the back burner. My final film in particular will require a hefty amount of pre-production in order to get going. In fact, the setting up of backgrounds, characters and scenery elements is going to be the hardest part of the task, not even the animation. And I should be, by week 7, well into producing those parts. Nevertheless, because of animation social distractions and professional practices, I'm barely out of character development stage. It can get slightly aggravating. However, now that I've assessed and realised my situation, I can take steps to rectify it. I mean, it would be much worse if I was behind in my work and didn't realise it, at least now I can do something about it...and hopefully without upsetting my professional practices.


On a different note, we went to London today. Here's a picture of me with a living statue:

You like that? Good. It was an alright trip. It mainly involved walking around, looking at artwork, walking around some more, looking at historical artefacts and walking around looking for the lost people who weren't walking around fast enough. Also, despite my earlier ranting, I've managed to assemble a test of the opening scene of my film, the name of which I've codenamed "Jess Sturich". This is just to test the timing of the opening scene, none of the visuals are not those intended for the final piece.