Final Animation

So here it is! It took a lot of hard work animating into the wee small hours of the morning and painting and cutting out all the sets by hand, but it was all worth it! :

 
The Isle from Allie Oldfield on Vimeo.

Sets and things

Here are a few images that I took of the sets, the quality isn't great as I took them on my phone because I was using my camera for filming, but I hope the process is clear! I had to make each set each time, so once I dismantled it I couldn't shoot it again as getting every tree in the exact same place would be near impossible, so I had to make sure I was happy with what I had shot afterwards. A bit nerve-wracking! 

Odds and Sods

Making all the sets has taken me a very long time, from painting every tree to cutting out the last mountain by hand, this has definitely been an intensive project! Here are a few images of the final storyboard and other things I've done so far:

 

I was told during a critique that my visuals were right but the story had to be cemented. So here it is! After thinking about narrative theories (Todorov and Propp mainly) I realised that there had to be a motivation for the main character to go on his travels. So like my 5-year old self he collects shells and trinkets on the beach and discovers a gigantic shell that is taken from him by a mischievous dragon, and thus his journey begins to retrieve what is his!

It seems I might have to cut out the giant scene, as so far test animating him has been difficult due to his cumbersome size; I'm a bit disappointed as I liked this scene but that's the joys of film making I suppose!

Also here's a test I made for the intro, I re-did it because the lighting wasn't right, but hopefully this will give an idea of what the animation will be like!

Music

So obviously music is an important factor in a film, it sets the pace and the tone, and from looking at my animation so far I knew I needed something with a good pace and wasn't too slow and that gave the animation a lighthearted tone. At first I found a site called Soundofpicture.com which had a lot of instrumental music on it classed by moods, which was an excellent resource. I was fond of this song http://soundofpicture.com/MP3/Curious/Curious.mp3 but felt it was too much like a video game soundtrack and I wanted something more organic to complement the hand made themes. 

The music of my animation came to me whilst I was listening to the band 'Iron and Wine' which had a lot of bango and guitar on it, and after searching on spotify for instrumental banjo music I found a perfect instrumental banjo/guitar piece by Rev. Gary Davis of the Maple Leaf Rag. I can't find an exact video of the song but the tune goes kind of like this: