OUAN504 - Telling Tales - Introduction

The telling tales task is one of the first studio briefs we have been given since being back at the start of level 5. After going over the brief description and based on what Mat said, it contains a large amount of Maya and the task itself is based around the use of 3D animation and modelling. Considering this is our first long brief since returning it's quite daunting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it states that we must work in pairs to develop a narrative - relating it to the character and narrative module which it's contained and in turn a short animation piece lasting 1 minute in length. This is an exciting but daunting prospect, it is the first time we have 'collaborated' or worked with someone else on a dedicated brief in order to produce a piece of work. So it shall definitely be an exciting but difficult challenge based on the level of communication and negotiation of ideas that will have to take place in order to be successful.

In terms of characters for this brief, it says there can be two characters although I'm not certain how flexible that is at this point unless it is too much given the time frame we have to produce the piece. It also said that the two characters must be divided between the pair, so I suppose one design per person. As always there is an emphasis on time constraints and limitations due to not only the time (deadline 09/12/15) but our technical limitations. The majority of us haven't used Maya too much outside of the set tasks from level 4 as a way of introducing us to the software, but I trust we will still be able to create something relatively detailed with backgrounds and environments. Since the briefs emphasis is on the characters and story the final outcome will have to include a well rounded story that can be easily translated and received by an audience within the time limitation of 1 minute, hopefully with the aid of good audio design in combination with successful characters and narrative ideas it will be manageable.

There are eight titles to choose from and base the narrative on, these have been chosen to suit the brief and guide us to produce stories with two main characters.

• Happy Days
• Predator Prey
• Leap of Faith
• Opposites Attract
• The Message
• Road to Nowhere
• Rivals
• Adrift

At first glance I had some ideas straight away regarding possible stories that would fit under these titles. For 'Predator Prey' I imagined several short pieces where that would be an appropriate title such as a chase, an illness or a disease, a person following another person or something more obvious like an animal being hunted either by a human or another animal. Even this scenario made me think of some more vague ideas such as a mosquito being a hunter as oppose to what we think of as a natural hunter, a wolf, crocodile, leopard etc. The title 'Rivals' also made me think of some stories that I thought could work quite well, I liked the idea of two WWII pilots attempting to shoot each other down or a more obvious high school rivalry that is so often seen in animation, especially in Japanese animation. My favourite idea for this title was the idea of 'rival' business owners, shop or restaurant owners that were neighbouring businesses and competed with each other for business - I thought this could have been quite a light hearted and easy to portray piece. Finally, some of the ideas I had for the 'Road to Nowhere' title was a play on words, like trying to portray the 'salary man' lifestyle that is often seen or talked about again in Japanese culture - the idea of having a routine that is very rarely broken and life mostly revolves around work is very heavily career based. Another example of a story similar to this is portraying two characters in a 'dead end' relationship and trying to demonstrate their struggles through a short animation. More extreme and perhaps less relatable story would be something like a very short piece focused on or around a post-apocalyptic world. After writing down some quick ideas, I realised that despite the fact we have been given titles for the narrative, it doesn't in any way made it difficult to think of stories and using these alone there is an incredible amount of different narratives we could produce, so this was quite an exciting prospect from the get go.