[Vampire Pixel] Week 1 summary

Now that I finally have an idea I'm happy with for my narrative animation, I'm hopefully going to make weekly update summaries on the project.

WEEK 1: Tuning the idea.
After my initial pitch of the idea, I had a very on and off relationship with it. The theme was there, a homage to Cartoon Network style shows, and I had strong vision of how I wanted the idea to work. The only problem was originality. I was too close to the influences, and the art, characters and premise were clearly similar to that of "The Powerpuff Girls".
In a later session, my tutor mentioned something that turned my idea around and gave it just the spark it needed. Something I now call the "What if?" rule. I put the fault in my video down to the three protagonists, and knew this needed to change, a simple "what if I had a different team" question was all I needed to get the creative ball rolling. I know it sounds like the most simple idea in the world, but sometimes you can get that involved in a project that you forget to take a step back and look at the very core fundamentals.

With this new idea in mind, I started a new team while giving them the same goal and surroundings. I also decided to try varying the members rather than having three human girls with the same body type. I gave the new team body shapes that reflect their character. After all, what's character animation without character?

Due to the nature of the video and the target audience (early teens "Cartoon Network" inspired) I needed the characters to be easily readable too. One of my character design books, "Creative Character Design" by Bryan Tillman shows some guidelines about the level of detail characters should have for particular age groups. I've listed two below;

"Ages 9-13 Characters are pulling away from the simplistic. They resemble more believable proportions. The colours are more realistic and have a lot more details.

Ages 14-18+ Characters resemble the real world. They are properly proportioned. The colours are more complicated, and they have the most amount of detail."

(Page 104)

For my team my characters have a moderate amount of detail, while keeping a strong colour contrast to fit the theme and art direction of the world. I've also assigned them to primary colours, red, blue and yellow. In a later version I've also changed the cat to have a green theme.
With the new character designs, I also thought up how the team would fit into the story. I kept the environments of the previous idea but changed the approach. Rather than a team of superheros, I've made them into a high tech, SWAT like team. Their job is to contain ghosts that escape from the city generator.

In an one to one session with my tutor, I was asked what I want to get out of this animation. After some thought this feels like a character study, as the story is centered around the relationship between two sisters, and I'm also practicing character animation that reflects.... character!

With the character designs and world finally down, I moved on to the script.