By the way...

Still slogging away on the mind-numbing combination of dissertation + hand drawn animation. Not getting very far with it, kind of depressing. Need to find some more 1 or 2 day projects now that the B.T.C.M.L project has been extended.

In the meantime, have been watching lots of animations, for purely research purposes you understand, and came across this brilliant film:


It's called Tekkonkinkreet (which apparently is a wordplay if you can read Japanese), and is about two street children, violent and aggressive Black, and his ward White, a metally retarded/psychic eleven year old. Most of it is about the power stuggles in the city they live in between them and the mobsters and the other street gangs, but ends with a weird little exploration of Black's pshyche and how important it is for darkness to be counterbalanced with light (hence Black/White, geddit?) This was made by the same studio who did the Animatrix and, I think, Global Astroliner, and it's a great film. It... how can I put this. It doesn't intially look like our idea of anime, but it watches like anime. Something in the pacing, which is really refreshing to see; no magic sparkly people, no outrageous hair, no giant eyes. Just smart, sensible drawings and a great story.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm plugging this now :)

The Book that changed my life - animatic

After de-constructing and then reconstructing the storyboard I already had (basically cutting it in half, taking the first half and expanding on it. It just didn't flow before, it felt too cramped for its 45 seconds and very disjointed) I now finally have something to work with. So I dismantled it and re-did it in time for crit. It's just a shame it took so long for me to work out what was wrong with the first version; I feel like I've wasted a lot of time.

I ran it through Photoshop and turned the post-it storyboard into an animatic, with the kind of soundtrack I'd like it to have. I might even keep this one, it fits so well, although it might be a little slow.



I quite like it like this, the pacing seems a lot better. I booked a dictaphone from Fairburn to do the narration on but the person I was meant to get it from didnt bring it back. I'll try again tomorrow.