OUAN504 - Telling Tales - Narrative

Coming up with a simple story idea for the animation we have to produce is quite easy, especially given the breadth and freedom we have been given. In a sense there are an infinite number of stories we could come up with to fit the brief, the more difficult task is to create a story that's appropriate for the 1 minute time frame and that will flourish in that very short story format. About a week into the project me and my partner for the project, Wing, have started to storyboard our ideas and manifest all of the brainstorming we've undertaken into a visual format. We have had multiple ideas for the story based on the different titles. We based our choice of title predominantly on which we could create story ideas for at first glance, this may have been a difficult way to narrow it down though due to the huge amounts of overlap there is when it comes to the titles - as they were all designed for two characters, and two character plots. So in that sense they could all apply to very similar story lines. However, out of the seven titles; Happy Days, Predator Prey, Leap of Faith, Opposites Attract, The Message, Road to Nowhere, Rivals and Adrift, we thought we preferred Predator Prey, Rivals and Road to Nowhere the most, and they all have overlapping implications so that worked out quite well too.

In the second week, we decided to take our ideas and try to develop them further both on our own and together through means of brainstorming and discussion. When we first starting generating ideas we came together and proposed the idea of having animals on a farm or even a hunter and prey kind of story. The idea for these stemmed from the desire to include animals within the narrative for a variety of reasons. Firstly it created a new complex in the story which appealed to us both when we first proposed it. It also made an interesting challenge in terms of our technical ability using Maya, but after discussing this briefly with Mat he showed me how simple a character could still contain a certain visual style only using simple polygons in combination with some of the tools available within the software such as 'toon outline' and various colour options that create a very unique and interesting look to the objects they're applied to. After much of the deliberation between me and Wing we decided we liked the idea of placing the narrative on a farm, a story between a farmer and the pigs he has on his farm. The original idea we had was to tell the story from the pigs perspective, and how the farm looked and felt like a prison to them - this includes elements such as high walls, barbed wire and fencing, floodlights or searchlights monitoring the grounds - all of these elements to try and create a empathetic kind of scenario for the story to be told within, and from the perspective of the animals. The premise of the narrative as we were putting forward ideas back and forth between each other gave way to the concept that a pig or group of pigs would plan there escape, and after a last check from the farmer at night the pigs would put there plan into action and get past all of the security aspects of a farm and break free - taking influence from things like The Great Escape and The Shawshank Redemption amongst other 'classic' escape or prison films that would add an element of comedy into the story. So the way we thought would be a good way to represent this kind of break out narrative, with the addition of some humour would be to show the breakout attempt several times, each time the farmer catching up with the pig on his epic escape and dragging him back to his sty - implying he does this a lot. The ending would be the final escape, and end there.

However, there were several flaws with this narrative. Firstly it was far too complex and 'full-on' to be contained within a short story such as this particular one minute long animation. Infact, after talking to Mat regarding what he thought about the story idea he said it would be more fitting for a short film, than what we were asked to do. Which after reflecting on I agreed with, it was perhaps too ambitious and in actual fact probably quite impossible to achieve, at least to a good standard. Wing, I and Mat discussed a possible variation the story we could use and run with. Mat suggested using one of the three segments or strands of the story out of the three 'attempts' pig character has at escaping and develop it further with the reference to some classic films, with added humour and small details that in itself would prove to be an short uplifting and enjoyable piece about three animals trying to dig there way out of a farm - which I found quite charming and am excited to begin developing further. Another advantage of the way we have attempted to condense the story is that we can develop the characters further and show off a little more of their personalities which is something I wanted to achieve personally within the piece we created and it also is quite an important requirement or objective in terms of the brief, so it's definitely the right direction.

I did a few thumbnail art pieces to help myself visualise the types of scenes and the overall feel of the short animation that I want to incorporate into the final thing, these concepts and ideas were for the original story and not the final one, but I have tried to adapt them slightly - and they're still useful as reference and visual materials to work from as the project continues.