Progress Work: 2nd Presentation and A New Story Arc (Again).

Well, first of all, let me pad Asim and myself on the back for a job well done. Especially Asim who had to do 2 presentation today and haven't been able to get any decent sleep for the past few days. And as the title of this post suggest, we've went on to create another script, which would be our 6th script by the way, and we're very confident with it. So during todays presentation which would include the whole class and our profs, we're able to get laughs throughout the presentation and storyboards (definitely a good sign). Everyone seems to be very happy with our new story ^_^. And our profs (Ed and Galen) had FINALLY given us the green light to proceed with our project. YAY!!!!!!
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This is the newer version of the story arc:


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This is script for the newer and finalized version of the story:

The camera opens up to an 8 year old kid named Billy playing "cops androbbers" around a park bench. Billy has a bright imagination and tends totake things too far. He is often left unattended and is used to playingalone. Since Billy has no other friends around to play with he tends toimprovise, today he is both the "cop" and the "robber".

Billy jumps on the bench pretending to be the cop and uses his finger as aprop replacement for a gun. "Bang, Bang" he says as he pretends to shoot therobber behind the bench. Suddenly Billy jumps to the other side and takesthe role of the robber, he ducks and covers from the imaginary bullets.Switching places again, he says "Bang, Bang" as the cop. Now back as therobber, "Oooww.I'm hit" he says as he falls to the ground, playing deadgesturing his hand towards the sky as if it was last breath.

A fast approaching figure flies by leaving a trail of blue and red behindhim. He appears to be a super hero. This unknown super hero stops his flightin mid air as he notices Billy on the ground from afar; fearing the worst ofthe situation. He dashes down to ground level to rescue the boy.

Billy bored and tired of his imaginary play gets up and starts to scrape thedirt off his cloths and the many bandages he has on. The bandages are aresult of his rough play outdoors. From behind him our super hero friendapproaches slowly, dropping his shadow onto Billy. Billy noticing the shadowslowly turns around and is awestruck. He isn't scared, he's just sosurprised. As if he ran into a famous celebrity.

The unknown super hero turns out to be Super Michel Jakson (MJ). Billy knowsall about MJ and is very familiar with his "good" deeds.

MJ approaches Billy with a smile, his eyes drop onto Billy's many bandagesand fear emerges. MJ is very worried and tends to exaggerate the situation.Trying to convince Billy he has to be taken to a hospital right a way. MJturns out to be very desperate at helping Billy, regardless of how small thesituation is. Billy looks a little confused then a small smirk shows up onhis face. Billy has an idea; a new fun game to play.

"Aawwww it hurts, it hurts" Billy yells as he grabs his stomach. Billydecides to pretend an injury seeing how devastated MJ can become. Billyslowly fakes a painful death and falls flat on his back.

MJ is shocked and can't think of what to do. Sweat starts poring down hisface as he argues with himself whether he should stay and help the boy orjust leave him there. The situation seems to have turned serious and MJfears he cannot handle it. MJ turns around and looks at the body, suddenlyhe realizes he cannot give in and must help the boy. He dashes over to thebody to check for a pulse but doesn't know how to read it; he tries toperform CPR as well as he can remember but still no response from Billy. MJcan only think of one last maneuver that could save Billy's life. He pullsout a breath freshener and sprays it in his mouth, and then he slowly triesto open Billy's mouth while moving himself closer.

"BOOOOOOO" screams Billy as he jumps up from his previously position. MJresponds with a very loud shriek, suddenly his face is frozen in terror andhis hands clenching his chest as he drops to the ground.

Billy says "Bang Bang!" as he pulls his imaginary gun out. No response. MJis lying silent on the floor. Billy walks over to the body and tries to moveit a little with his foot, still no response. Billy looks around, no one'sthere. He walks away from MJs body while whistling to him self.

THE END
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To view the presentation and storyboards (Flash Player required), please click here. You have to press Ctrl+Enter to proceed through the slides. Thanks.

Progress Work: A New Story Arc, it makes more sense

So last night Ferry and I camped out in basement until we were done with a story. We followed the two books Ed handed out to us on screen writing and developed from what Mark had introduced to us yesterday at Sheridan College. Basically we developed the following story arc that defines what will happen with the three acts. I think the story we have now come up with makes the most sense. Ferry and I are an unstoppable team!

So to run through the story we have so far...

The camera opens up to a white empty space and we are introduced to Billy, a small 5 year old kid who looks slightly frustrated and lost, his lips are curling in as if he is about to start crying and we see in his eyes the same innocence that the character Puss In Boots showed in Shrek 2.

Billy takes baby steps but is confused as to what direction to walk in and looks around the empty space for some sign of direction, in an almost frightened and lost voice he says "Mommy....? Mommy?" but only hears his voice echo this empty universe he has found himself in.

Suddenly he sees a dark figure approach in a heroic stance and realizes that his tiny distress situation was picked up by this super being, this super man. Billy holds back his tears and looks at this new character from foot to as high as his tiny neck can stretch. The unknown hero steps forward from the shadows and reveals his face asking him "Are you lost? Let me help you...". The unknown hero turns out to be the famous Super Michel Jakson, and this is Billy's first encounter with this incredibly well-know superhero.

When Billy's eyes land on Super MJ's face a sudden terror emerges in Billy's eyes and he breaks into tears. He now feels like he is in grave danger and his life is at risk. Billy seems to be very afraid of this super hero, so scared that he is afraid to move, all he can do is stand and cry.

Super MJ's heart can't take Billy's increased distress and he wants to quiet Billy down so that he can help him. Super MJ feels it is his duty to help every child in the world and Billy definitely seems to need his help. In the increased tension, MJ starts making funny faces at Billy in order to calm him down. Billy slows down his crying and looks at MJ then suddenly breaks into more tears, this time yelling for Mommy.

MJ is confused as to what to do and starts to sweat a little. He has realized that Billy can't be helped until he stops crying but the biggest challange seems to be stopping him from crying. MJ starts to have second thoughts but the child's yelling reminds MJ of his super hero responsibilities and his devotion to children everywhere. MJ is now more determined than ever to help Billy and will not give up!

In an effort to calm Billy down again MJ uses his super abilities of flight and speed to fly back and forth with objects that might stop Billy from crying. MJ dashes back and forth in a split second and hands Billy a rubix cube, Billy continues to cry. MJ dashes back and forth with ice-creme but that ends up melting during flight, Billy keeps crying. MJ dashes back and forth and comes back with a baby bottle filled with milk and puts it in Billy's mouth. Silence.

MJ seems to have achieved the impossible, he stopped Billy from crying and he feels very proud of himself. MJ decides to reach over and grab Billy gently telling him "Let's go find your mommy little boy..."

Suddenly Billy throws the bottle at MJ's face and goes into a fit. Billy is now extremely frustred and annoyed and his actions start to show. He starts stopping around yelling, annoying MJ as much as he thinks he can. MJ's face brings forward a look of defeat and regret, he feels he has had enough of this kid. His eyes start to heat up and redden as if he wants to use his heat vision to obliterate this kid.

Suddeny a gentle voice from the left yells "Billy, let's go, I got your ice-creme...where have you been". Billy runs to the voice yelling "Mommy!" with his arms spread open and a cheerful smile.

MJ's eyes start to go back to normal as they follow Billy moving away from him. MJ is now left dumbstruck and disappointed.

THE END

Our next steps are to finish a story board and present this story and story board to Mark to get more professional feedback. Hopefully we can get some discussion time with Mark this Tuesday.

An Encounter at Sheridan College

Last week we had a talk with ED and found out that we are representing this week as our story was not complete to go forward. We Agree! So we went back home that night and decided to meet on Saturday. Saturday was also an Open House at Sheridan College and Ferry and I were attending to learn more about their animation program. Our plan was to come back to my place and work on our story after the event.

At the event we ran into Mark Simon, a professor of Computer Animation. I have been in touch with Mark before, over the summer, when I was researching colleges to attend after graduation. He remmbered me and surprisingly knew Shervin who teaches part of the Animation course at Ryerson. He was eager to hear what we were working on so we told him about this thesis and pitched him our story so far. He gave us fantastic feedback which was as simple as this "introduce the child first, then the superhero". He went into more detail but basically it gave us an amazing foundation to start from. Not only that, he wants to help further and meet us next week before our presentation. This is amazing!

Progress Work: Jacko rotoscoping for 3D

Here is a front and side view that I am going to use to start constructing our main character in 3d. I am not 100% satisfied with the side view but am waiting on feedback from Ferry as to where to go with it next before modeling it.

One Week Later...

This has been a hectic week for the both of us. Well basically our liberal classes are almost coming to an end and we're busy writing our final essays and projects for them. But regardless, our 4th year final 3d-short project is still the most important project among all of them. And we're finally able to create another storyline for it which revolves more around the character Michael Jackson as Superman as suggested by people in class during the presentation.

We're able to narrow down our characters to only 2 of them now, which would include Michael Jackson as Superman and a young boy (around 6 - 10 years old). The scene would still be happening in a coffee shop. And the story goes something like this:

After the flying "object" went inside the coffee shop, he would notice that there is nobody at the counter to serve him. He looked around trying to find any employee who could help him out when his cape was being tucked by something. He looked down at the "thing" that was tucking his cape and saw that it was a young boy who was lost. The young boy asked him, "Have you seen my mommy?" in an innocent and pure look (something like Puss In Boots in Shrek 2). Superman's heart sank and he started to daydream about him and the boy playing "chase" in a meadow and flying together in the sky. Then he came up with an idea. Superman looked around to make sure that no one was around and kneel down to speak with the boy, "Don't worry I'll take you to The Fortress of Solitude where you'll be safe". He then grabs the boy and disappear. I promise to pose the updated version of the storyboard as soon as possible ^_^.

We're thinking maybe the title for this short could be entitled "KIDnapped". But we still haven't decided on this yet. We've also gotten the way and look for our Superman's body and would be able to start modelling it. We still have a long way to go but we'll definitely accomplish our goal!

After Presentation..

Ferry was a nervous wreck over how many people were still in class by the end of the day. But he warmed up to it halfway into the presentation. We did go up second last , it always happens. What I hate about going last is I don't get the chance to say as much when a prof is saying "we have to move along" but that's why this blog is here I guess. Either way the presentation went fairly well I felt and we definitely got some good student feedback. I know we are going on an ambitious journey here so whatever we can cut down would be great. One comment that got me thinking was "your story focuses on the robber" which was true. And thats not what we want because it makes no sense. We need to re-make our story to focus on Super Jacko and keep moving with him. We aren't story writers unfortunately but we will need to figure something out this week. What is important is that we start modeling at least our main character. A filmed environment was also suggested to us at the end of class, which is another option over the 2D environment approach. Also, we could replace the robber with a kid, that probably makes more sense and drives the story forward, it also shifts attention towards the main character.

Overall there wasn't any concern addressed towards how we were doing our project, it was essentially the story and what we were presenting in it, and that NEEDS work ASAP!

So what next? Ferry and I need to do another 6 hour brain-storming session soon...then hunt down the faculty again with new ideas :)

You can view our presentation here (need latest Flash Player) - click anywhere on-screen to goto next slide.

Before Presentation...

Today, we're finaly having our 1st Presentation in front of the whole class instead of just our profs. Feeling a little nervous and excited at the same time, due to the fact that i'm a shy person ^_^ but I know for a fact that Asim and I are going to KILL this Presentation!!! Asim had created an awesome flash presentation for this very occasion. All hail Asim!!!

We've work very hard for our researches, designs, concepts and etc. Well, basically we've done our homework and we're confident. But needless to say feedbacks from a huge crowd will always be beneficial for our project. And I'm hoping to get some really useful and helpful feedbacks from the class.

Interview: Ben Sanders (Animator)

I got in touch with Ben Sanders, an animator I managed to get a hold of while I was searching for animation colleges. He has worked so far at BlueSky, DNA Productions, and Animal Logic and was very informative and willing to do a quick Q & A online. I asked him to take a look at this blog and explained our general concept and idea to him. Immediately he had some excellent feedback.

He does think, like James and Shervin, that our storyline is a bit too long and complex to pull off in good quality in 5 months. One of the suggestions he gave to cut down on production time was to use a 2D set which I think is a fantastic idea. Essentially we focus on the interior of the coffee shop only and have everything made in 2D except the characters. He said this might be a reasonable way of focusing more on quality animation and getting the story completed in time. I personally think it is a very intelligent idea.

He also suggested we practice good animation tests, they will be helpful as a demo reel item in the future.

Thanks for all the tips Ben. By the way, this is Ben's site.

More Prof talk / chit-chat

Yesturday Ferry and I decided to get more work done on the project. We decided we had to try and get more feedback on our further developed story and idea. We first hunted down Kathleen after class to tell her what our idea was since we hadn't had the chance to talk to her yet. Galen was also there so we got more than one opinion. Thankfully there was no negative feedback on the fact that we were doing a computer animated short, I was fearing we may get some head turns...

Kathleen and Galen pointed out that we don't have to make a comedy for the sake that almost every animated movie is like that. We could go serious and just showcase what we can do with the medium. But I still like challenges and I don't want to deliver a half-ass project in the end so I think we should make it look great of course but also not skimp out on a good story. I love to see characters come to life, but I also like the satisfaction of knowing I made something people like as a package.

Our next meeting was with James, again. I felt we had to go back and see James since he knows the industry and has good ideas on how to put together a good movie. We pitched our story and pointed out we had troubles with the ending. James threw out some helpful pointed and suggested we understand our character better by formulating a list of what we know about the character. Knowing our character is a combination of two personalities we made the following list, a character sketch:

Jackson: What we know
- over sensitive
- loves children
- overprotective in public
- not fit to be a father
- trying to make a comeback
- respected by black community
- tries to be godlike
- selfconcious about his face
- he can sing and move
- accused of molesting kids
- one son one daughter (claim to be his)
- has skin disorder
- plastic surgery, nose
- used to be black
- was a superhero type in his age
- in debt now
- was covered with lawsuits
- sold neverland ranch
- loves kids, literally

Superman: what we know
- wants to be accepted for who he is
- greatest hero of all time
- has a large responsibility
- always saving people
- an alien from another planet
- weakness is cryptonite
- has abilities beyond human capabilities
- has many fans, people like him and hate him
- killed by doomsday
- hides his true identity
- gain knowledge in fortress of solitude
- an icon
- doesn't age

SuperJacko (combination)
- he likes being immortal
- uses his power mostly for good, but also for personal satisfaction
- has a lot of fans
- tries to show his alien personality
- wants to appear as unhuman as possible, different, plastic
- has gay parents
- has a fondness for little boys
- designed a suit to make himself look muscular, hide his freakisly alien body
- likes coffee for free
- likes to endorse products, appear godlike..a celebrity
- he hates people touching his face, obsessed about his face
- very impatient of others...demands attention for himself
- likes chimps
- favourite movie is peter pan (likes to fly like peter pan)
- doesn't have a dayjob
- relies on his heroism for money
- he likes saving people from death like danger
- he enjoys knowing he has made a difference
- he doesnt realize he is gay
- bullied as a kid

So we ended up with a sketch of the personality of our character, and this is suppose to help us determine what the character may do in the ending.

Where are we this week?

We havn't been doing as much running around as we did earlier. I guess that is because we are solidifying our concept. We basically started this week off by me camping out in Ferry's animation class so we could talk to James again and his Maya assistant Shervin who also happens to be an animator on an upcoming Fox animation. Or so I've been told. Basically we presented to them what we are planning to do and as expected got a worried response. Both Shervin and James said it would be very difficult to accomplish our said script in time and I know from experience it would be. Before getting into this I knew we would have to scale back so what I think we will do is focus work on a good portion of the story that we would have as a solid end product and see how we are going with time. If time remains we do other areas of it. But I do have full confidence on our abilities to full this off, we have pulled of a 1 character animation in 5 weeks from start to finish before so I think a larger scale project is probable if we put everything in it. Plus, I always like a challenge, and haven't failed to complete one yet.

Aside from having their doubts, they did offer some good advice. Or rather we wanted to know how to start our character modeling properly. At first we were going to model each character's body and then cloth it but Shervin directed us to ignore anything under clothing that won't ever be seen to reduce work and render time. It makes sense. He also directed us to learningmaya.com for several tutorials we can follow and he was happy to see us follow the Joan of Arc tutorial I mentioned earlier, he said it was "a very good tutorial". So i think we are on a good start. However, presenting next week, we have to be better ready so me and ferry are not leaving school this Thursday until we have 3 solid characters we can model and create. We are going to sit and figure this out. Also we hope to FINALLY meet with ED, maybe Ira and James to get some more ideas on the overall story development.

Also, I love Ferry's drawings - mine are too serious....go Ferry!