Animation treatment and research
The Hidden Cave
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| Concept art for this animation |
This is a task which actually brings back my childhood memories when I felt so creative and my imagination power was endless. I think it is time to bring those feelings and use them to produce something which I will be proud of. Making a story could possibly feel like a simple task, but it is not. In fact creating an imagined world requires logic and substantiality to give a feeling of a possibility for this world to exist. I am that person who loves the detail, that means that I want to be sure, that once you had an overall look of something you like, you are able to explore and see more within that horizon. I am very grateful to my destiny which introduced me to the English writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 - 1973). A feeling of completely real and completed world which his books can give are incredible and therefore I am inspired to detail my own story as much as I can to make it interesting and alive.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
Idea
In the first week when this task was introduced I had a creative crisis and it was very difficult for me to become with some nice idea which could be referenced from my previous work - the comic. Looking for some inspiration I have been watching tutorials about the landscape designs and I found my inspiration in there. A Variety of beautiful fantasy landscapes gave me a clear understanding what kind of setting I will use for my animation. I thought that it would be great to have a story which would be suitable for a wide range of the audience. Kids would enjoy it because of the visual style and fantasy setting, adults would enjoy it because of the narrative and some important life aspects. A lack of speech during the animation will also focus the attention of the viewer on actions produced by the character. Facial emotions will play a crucial role in this animation.
Audience
The Audience of this short animation movie will be quite wide and will suit adults as well as the younger generation. Although, the main audience will be 7-14 years old children, but to understand the whole concept of the story they might need to have some explanations from their parents. This particular animation will show how harmful can be an unreasonable system of values. How can we harm or even destroy pieces of an environment because we think that some things that we do are harmlessness? This animation will have incredible visuals so even the older audience will enjoy it to remember how important care about someone else is. This animation will have an important aspect as a system of values and why should we sometimes give a priority to someone before us. Why is this so important for me to show these barely noticeable issues about values? I want to show that it is hard to leave something that is so important to you to save or to leave alone something that can be damaged because of your ego. I think this is very important in our society to teach these important lessons to kids as they are going to be the next generation of our kind. We are egoistic in our actions so often that sometimes it is so crucial to explain why you should not infringe someone else's freedom in the name of your own interest.
Where is it going to be shown?
I think the best platform where I could show my animation would be a very popular youtube channel theCGBRo. Researching the statistics of the internet usage of 8 to 11 years old I found out that the vast majority (95 %) are accessing the internet at least once a day. (surname, date)45% of them are using social networking sites and this information clearly leads to that fact, that the internet is the more common way of the amusement. Also, this youtube channel is a leading channel dedicated to the short animation movies. It is easy to access so kids, who are interested in animations are able to find this channel and look up for new animations almost every day. I think this platform is more suitable than a TV as the television is losing its popularity and a short movie format is not really acceptable on the TV.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheCGBro
Environment
From the first look, the setting of the animation will appear to be quite similar to our world. There will be the same timing, gravity, and physics. Similar plants and terrain will constitute a common terrain. Although there will be no evidence of the human existence and the world itself will be based on a fantasy setting. Glowing plants, caves and fantasy creature called Susur (the main character). By this, I wanted to show that the world setting is easy and understandable for the younger audience. Even if this world has common rules of physics it is still has a fantasy aspect and unique life forms which can exist there and fit organically. For more excitement, I have decided to use fantasy character who will look cute and will have a human-like behavior so it will be easy to compare him to a human without a huge reflection about his behavior and habits.
Brief plot (first idea)
A little creature is searching around the rocky plains for berries and seeds as well as something shiny and eye-catching as this creature is very curious, he finally finds some crystal protruding from a slot. When he detaches the crystal from the cliff, he suddenly brakes the cliff wall and notices an entrance to the cave. He follows his adventure spirit and decides to descend to the cave. He finds beautiful plants which are glowing like a moon at the night in this mighty cave, and also, a huge gem in the middle of the cave heavily sanded. Realizing that this finding is the most beautiful he has ever seen he immediately takes it and pushes across the cave to bring this godsend to his hollow. The gem is very heavy, but it doesn't matter if it is so shiny and amazing. Having the obvious inconvenience he pulls the gem out of the cave and rolls it to put in the middle of his hollow. When this action is finished and the gem is in the middle of the hollow, it is getting dark and the creature is going to sleep. When the clouds diverge and the moon shines through the entrance of the hollow, the gem starts to produce annoying and loud noise. It wakes the creature up. When the creature is getting up to check what is going on, he blocks the moonlight and the stone stops to sing. This happens couple more times and finally, the creature realizes that this stone is making this annoying sound and being very angry tries to decide what to do and when weighing fo and against is finished he pushes the gem through the hole of the hollow and goes to sleep.
P.S
After the one to one tutorial where I have received some feedback about my idea. I have realized that my story is too long and too detailed. Having such an amount of different scenes my storyboard would be endless. I took into the aŃcount my tutors advice to shorten a story or even change it. I have also felt that my idea has a strong introduction with interesting details, but the ending was too shallow and did not have any strong idea behind.
Refined Plot
When I shared my first animation plot with my friend we both noticed that the beginning of the story sounds quite decent but the ending is way too weak. I was thinking, how could I improve the ending and make it comprehensible. The moment, when Susur is throwing the gem out of his hollow doesn't really fit with his obsession with shiny objects. Therefore the ending is pointless if I will stick with this idea. It is clear that this animation could fit in 6 minutes but it needs to be full-fledged and I need to figure out how to reach this goal. I would like to keep the setting in terms of the main location and also the idea about caves with glowing plants needs to stay. What I need to change is the whole story which is going to happen in this setting. I imagined that the opening scene could start at the plains where I will introduce Susur while he is searching for something to eat. When he reaches one of the cliffs he suddenly notices shiny mineral attached to the cliff. Susur insistently tries to detach this shiny object and when it happens, he crushes some parts of the cliff and opens the entrance to the cave. Reflectively he decides to enter the cave. There he finds amazing, glowing flora and a huge gem in the center of the cave. Pleased with such a finding he instantly reaches the gem and picks it up. In this moment, when Susur picks up the gem, every single plant stops to glow and looses its beauty. Susur understands what is happening, but he doesn't want to leave the gem, he want's to own it. He decides to take gem and moves towards the exit. When he reaches the portal, he sees how empty his world really is, there are lifeless stones, cliffs and a great shortage of greens. Then he looks back to the cave, which is dark and lifeless and returns to that spot where the gem was installed. He puts gem back into the slot and every single plant in the cave comes back to life. Susur is observing this beauty and enjoys it. Surprisingly plants start to bloom even more and Susur finds, that these plants start to produce huge berries. He tries one and it tastes so delicious that he is unable to stop because finally, he can eat up.
P.S.
I think that this variant of the plot sounds better that the previous one. It has a problem which I would like to show. It has a beginning where we can see a creature which looks for food in such a wasteland. In the same time, we can see that this creature likes shiny objects. At the first moment when Susur reaches the gem in the center of the cave, he is ready to destroy this beautiful world and suddenly changes his mind when he compares his place of living with the cave and sees that there is no difference anymore. When he puts the gem back into the intended place, plants (nature) is thankful and gives him a reward (berries, food). This ending changes Susur's ideology and by this, I wanted to show that we, as humans are ready to destroy nature to capture its goods. We are destroying nature to have beautiful objects, like furniture, cars, brilliants etc. And possibly, if we are going to stop it, nature will reward us with something which we cannot see or understand yet.
Change of values
This will be the main point of the animation where we will be able to see how Susur changed his mind when he was standing between these two worlds. His wasteland/desert and cave, which had such an amazing flora before he decided to took that gem away. When he understands that he turned this glowing beauty into the dark and unpleasant place he decides to put the gem back. At this moment he is changing his values and makes an important decision. He suppresses his willing to own such a shiny object and give the priority to nature.
Personally, I believe that every single act which is driven by good intentions always will be rewarded so this is why I wanted to reward Susur with these beautiful and tasty berries and also to give him a feeling that he can stay there for a living as this place will provide him with food as he is caring about this place.
This story will introduce a small creature called Susur. This creature is gracious and eats fruits, nuts, roots and insects to survive on its daily basis. He is graminivorous and very active especially when he is looking for shiny and interesting trivia. This attraction to shiny things is driven by the fact that these objects in Susur's place of residence are a very rare thing. The location where Susur dwells looks like a stone desert with massive cliffs and stone blocks scattered around.A lack of a constant place of water location could be another reason for Susur's attraction. To support this thought we can observe a small paragraph from the Journal of Consume where Vanessa M. Patric says:
our preference for glossy might be deep-rooted and very human. It is humbling to acknowledge that despite our sophistication and progress as a species, we are still drawn to things that serve our innate needs–in this case, the need for water.”
Susur is definitely not a human and place where he lives has never been populated by humans, although I want to add some human-like characteristics and features to my creature to be closer to my main audience - kids. If I will use understandable and familiar emotions and actions it will be much more understandable even if the main character doesn't look like any noted animal in our familiar world. This one of the most important features of my animation - to create a fantasy world with unusual flora and terrain with our world rules and physics.
Remembering my own childhood I had a strong spirit of adventure and all things, such as polished glass or unusually shaped rock was regarded as an artifact. Based on my own experiecne which I had being very young I would like to bring this feeling back in this particular animation. This is why Susur will have this attraction to shiny things such as little glossy stones, glass pieces which could be found after a lighting hits the sand or amber with whimsical insects. Or different crystals, and minerals which could be found in deep and dark caves (we are not talking about human-made products containing metal, plastic or glass simply because the setting of this animation will have a place in a different world which will be discussed in setting section).
This how these shiny objects could look in the animation:
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Shiny things can be collected and displayed to attract mates. Typically birds and humans like to have such objects around their homes or nests for this reason.
This feature is the main mover of this story where we will be able to observe Susur's hollow in the very first minutes of the animation where all these shiny and eye-catching stuff will be scattered around in his place of residency. It will look like a treasure cave, although Susur is not attaching any value to it in terms of economics which doesn't exist in this fantasy world. I hope this will give an understanding what is this creature doing and will explain his feature being very attached to the shiny objects.
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| Screen shot from a game "Ori and the blind forest" I imagine Susur hollow to look something like that filled with different little crystals and minerals |
By adding this feature I wanted to show how shiny and basically useless these things are in our adult lives, although they can be very important to someone. This feature will be amazingly familiar to the younger audience as the adventure spirit is at its peak.These things occupied a big part of Susur's life and his emotions and actions regarding found objects will immerse kids and I hope they will have an amazing little adventure together with Susur.
UPDATE 12/03/2017
I will exclude this scene where we can observe the Susur's hollow as it is not the main point of the story anymore. I have changed my story where the main point will be the change of values so there is no need in this scene in the animation. Although I will leave this describing to give a better understanding who is this character and what he likes. I don't think that I will include this information in the essay.
To move further and make the animation really work I need to make Susur leave the hollow for new adventures and to show his everyday activities during the progression of the story. but before we are going out I would like to describe Susur's everyday behavior and look.
I can admit that I see this creature's behavior similar to a squirrel - very sharp movement and rapid change of the stance and position like these animals do when they are looking for nuts and seeds. Although I want to make Susur a charismatic creature with a curious temper. The best example would be Stich from the animation Lilu and Stich (!)
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| Stich |
I like the way this character moves and uses facial expressions which aren't over expressive but gives a full understanding of what this character is feeling/experiencing at particular moments. Furthermore, there is an amazing creature called Ori from a game called: Ori and the blond forest. This creature has a very tenacious temper and movement which I would like to use for my character. In fact, in this game, it is very hard to notice any facial expressions of the character so I will use Stich's facial expressions as the main reference.
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| Ori |
The color of the fur will be dark green as I want to avoid too much similarity between Susur and Stich. There is no special meaning or feature in this color in terms of potential predators as this imagined location has no predators included. The only practical feature of this color would be its ability to attract that small amount of a solar heat when the sun goes beyond the horizon. If we would like to touch his fur it would feel like a soft fur of the weasel. This happens because Susur is living in a quite sandy location and dust baths are an inalienable procedure which makes his fur look very healthy. ( act of grooming while rolling or moving around in dust or sand, with the purpose of cleaning fur, feathers or skin, and removing parasites ).
Susur's is two legged and two-handed character and he is gifted with a big pair of ears and eyes. At the tips of his ears, he has long brush like lynxes do. His eyes are made big to be able to notice potential goodies from a long distance and also to be able to find shiny objects if they will be reflected by the sun. His ears are used as a cooling system when it becomes too hot outside (similar to elephants). Susur is only 50cm tall and uses all 4 limbs during running, crouching, and climbing. To walk/stand he uses only his legs. A long tail, approximately half of his height helps him to maintain a balance during jumps and run. All of his limbs has four fingers to be able to climb and grab things. He is also marsupial and uses this pocket to store goodies. As for the speech, he cannot actually speak, but make sounds like whistles and short growls.
The fondness of hominids for crystals, gems, pearls, amber, silver, gold, and abalone or other colorful shells probably pre-dates humanity. Birds and monkeys tend to be visually oriented and quite prone to gather and hoard items they find interesting.
Shiny things can be collected and displayed to attract mates. Typically birds and humans like to have such objects around their homes or nests for this reason. The most appealing objects are not just shiny, they are round, small and emit high-pitched noises. Think clinking shiny coins or bells, or foil-covered Easter eggs that squeak, and you're on the right track.
Young crows have been reported to enjoy playing with items that sparkle or glitter. Perhaps it is an indication of the curiosity of an extremely intelligent type of bird. Even parakeets like to play with mirrors and bells. Male bowerbirds construct elaborate displays of items in their favorite colors, (not necessarily shiny things), for females to explore.
Possible running animation:
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| In this animation, we can see Ori running. I would like Susur to use similar type of a movement with using arms and legs together |
facial expressions:
These images are showing what kind of facial expressions Susur could have in a particular moment. Mostly he will use nosey expression as he is looking for goods and when he founds any he will have an emotion which represents satisfaction.
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| emotions of satisfaction |
Susur's main daily activities consist of food searching. He wakes up quite early, wit ha first sunshine to have a nice stretch before he goes out to find a breakfast. Susur's diet is amazingly simple. It consists of plants which are able to survive in these wastelands by having adaptation features that enable them to survive by storing water in their stems so they can provide water as well as necessary amino acids to our little creature. Also, roots, which goes deep into the ground, but sometimes can be found on the surface, are a delicacy and can provide valuable calories. Susur eats some insects if he is lucky to find any, but this type of the food is not favorite one simply because it is easier to find glowing berries deep in caves which are located around in great numbers. These glowing berries are the favorite snack of Susur as they glow with a blue light and tastes like nothing else. In fact, these berries produce bioluminescent light in these caves and can highlight some shiny things hidden in wall's cracks or between stones.
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| Blueberries are the main refernece for the glowing berries design |
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| Different roots which can be found around |
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| Seeds and nuts (reference) |
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During the day Susur is searching around for food and if he is lucky, some shiny items. When the day is over, usually when the sun goes beyond the horizon, Susur is leading back to his hollow to have a good sleep before a new day starts.
List of possible assets and feature within the animation
- Food (berries, bugs, leaves, nuts, and sometimes roots).
- Shelter (from rain and wind, mostly, but inside tree for smaller animals and fallen trees for beavers).
- Sun protection for animals or plants they eat.
- Escape from predators to run up to the tree.
- Travel route for trees with vines or for animals that can jump from tree to tree. Also across rivers and streams if fallen across.
- Oxygen production converting CO2 into oxygen.
- A place to live at.
- Trees let birds nest and play there.
- Trees also provide bark for house building for weasel and other creatures.
Basically, this behavior of Susur can be compared to our everyday activities which consist of working to get a food and new items (if you have a money). But still this is just a routine of small animal in his fantasy world which has the same aspect of the gravity, weather, and physics like our planet does.
Terrain and main place of the action
If we will imagine desert filled with stones from a little to a giant, huge cliffs rising from the sand, hundreds of caves with their cave systems and rarely seeded terrain on the surface, we could think that this place is inhabited and severe for a living. That would be true if we would be located in our world. In the matter of this fantasy world, this place is completely normal and makes no struggles to its habitants like bats, lizards, skunks and mice. There are some birds flying around and these birds are living in cliff caves like Cave swallow does. That small amount of trees, which can be found around are storing water in their trunks, therefore hollows made in these trunks will be extremely wet and will not be considered a place where to live. I wanted to make this scene look like it is something similar to our deserts, but with that difference, that there are trees growing and collecting water, there are birds living, glowing berries and different minerals and crystals like in the fantasy games.
The main reason for that was my willing to create something that we are used to but with a cardinal difference which you are not able to notice at the very first moment. If we will look at this animation setting, we can disassemble it layer by layer. So the first layer is the Mongolian plains, which in my opinion is incredible location. I took this place as a background because I like its massiveness and freedom. I watched a movie called "Mongolian" to get a better understanding of how this place looks in terms of cinematography and artistic character. The movie, which I am talking about is very serious and unfortunately, cannot be used as a reference for a camera movement during the character action, but can be used as an opening scene, when the camera is panning and showing the place where the animation will take a place.
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| Mongolian landscapes as a reference for the main look of the terrain (layer 1) |
The second layer is sand, which I wanted to add there to have something which would make this place look warmer and diluted the mood of the terrain as Mongolian plains have a very cold weather conditions (anticyclones are formed here over Siberia) to cool to hot summers in the deserts and semi-deserts.You can also find deserts in Mongolia, but I wanted to use green plains filled with sand for a different look to have a nice combination of green fields and sand.
There are thunder, which happens very often in these plains is causing lightings and therefore - glass (when lighting hits the sand and melts it.
The third layer would be massive stones scattered around to give more detail for the landscape and these stones would cast shadows and therefore provide a place where to hide from the sun for habitants of this world.
And the fifth layer would be massive cliffs appearing from the sands with cave entrances where bioluminescence berries and different minerals and crystals are located.
All these terrain types merged together would create a very unique and beautiful place for Susur to explore. Even if the surface of this fantasy world doesn't look like it is amazingly beautiful, the main beauty of this world is located in caves.
These caves are able to protect flora which is living in them. Also, blueberries are located there so it is almost necessary to go there. I have mentioned there are no enemies or predators so it is absolutely safe to explore.
Most of the plants and flowers glow with a bioluminescence colors which illuminates the cave creating an ambient mood. Sounds of dripping drops, a slight howling of the wind are the only sound resources in this place. It is quiet and beautiful. Unique ecosystem is able to provide a needed temperature for these plants and therefore these caves are warm enough to feel comfortable.
I want to create an unique landscape where the main action doesn't necessarily happen on the surface. This is why I wanted to use physical aspects of our world to combine them with fantasy features to immerse audience and to be sure there will be no questions - "how is that possible? This makes no sense!"
I was actually thinking to use one of these caves as plot twist where Susur tears off an interesting crystal from the surface of the cliff and brakes the wall and detects a hidden entrance where he finds a huge gem in fully illuminated with a bioluminescent light coming from plants.
The inspiration for this Idea came when I remembered how amazing forests were there at nights. I was blowed away with this fantastic views. I thought that I could combine this world with "Ori and the Blind forest" as the visuals of that game are just incredible...
Visual style
I knew from the beggining how my animation is going to look like. I wanted to create a stylized animation with an admixture of realism. I don't pursuit only a CGI look with incredible 3D characters and objects. Instead I would like to use drawn style with some CGI aspects of it like in the game "Ori and the Blind forest" I think this animation style will perfectly fit into my plans. I have also thought, that this visualization will be eye-catching and therefore more interesting to kids. A Cute character in a very colorful and interesting world is a winning combination, I think. I want to create the animation where kids would like to be living and exploring.
Thoughts about tutorials
After several Tutorials, I gained a better understanding how to structure my story to fit the introduction, main action and ending in 4-6 minutes long animation. The only problem which bothers me is the referencing part. I don't really understand how to use this aspect in a proper way as many of the ideas which are shown here have been coming out of my mind. And when I am looking for additional details for my story I don't know how to record it. The tutor has been telling me how to do it, but when I start to work on it I feel totally lost. Focusing on details within the animation story I am not thinking about referencing at all. I am just noting important features on the blog. I feel that this lack of understanding writing process will set me up.
Concept art
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| This is the final concept art of the scene where Susur finds the Hidden cave |
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| Character variations. |
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| One of my very first concept arts for this animation. |
Bibliography
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Katharine Trendacosta. 2017. The Whole "Magpies Like Shiny Objects" Thing Is Vicious Bird Slander. Available at: http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-whole-magpies-like-shiny-objects-thing-is-vicious-1627831152. [Accessed 01 April 2017].
Scientific American Blog Network. 2017. What Really Happens When Lightning Strikes Sand: The Science Behind a Viral Photo - Scientific American Blog Network. Available at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/what-really-happens-when-lightning-strikes-sand-the-science-behind-a-viral-photo/. [Accessed 26 March 2017].
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Oxford Dictionaries | English. 2017. What is the word for people who colle... | Oxford Dictionaries. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-is-the-word-for-people-who-collect. [Accessed 27 March 2017].
Wikipedia. 2017. Animal coloration - Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_coloration. [Accessed 01 April 2017].
Wikipedia. 2017. Lynx - Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx. [Accessed 01 April 2017].
Wikipedia. 2017. Wildlife of Mongolia - Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_of_Mongolia. [Accessed 01 April 2017
daily timewaster: The mysterious Libyan desert glass.. 2017. daily timewaster: The mysterious Libyan desert glass. Available at: http://dailytimewaster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-mysterious-libyan-desert-glass.html. [Accessed 01 April 2017].
daily timewaster: The mysterious Libyan desert glass.. 2017. daily timewaster: The mysterious Libyan desert glass. Available at: http://dailytimewaster.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-mysterious-libyan-desert-glass.html. [Accessed 23 March 2017].
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