~Minor Project begins~

Please see the post 'update' at : http://pwinandy.blogspot.com/ for more information regarding our Project. Pol has a knack of articulting things in a way I can not. Thanks.

"The Group Project with Jonny the Kid is also rapidly moving forward. A cool thing I have built into my personal workflow is the "Let's get all the poor ideas and drawings out of the system quickly so we can start getting some serious results" approach. It's been with us all the time and the level of objectivity we've managed to maintain has been very rewarding.

Producing Concept

This year, I want to see some really impressive results. The experimentation days are over, as I've said before. I have identified key skills that I need to acquire this year to really set myself apart from what everyone else is doing and they exclude experimentation. Revisiting transcription has had me closely analyze the mistakes I've made in animation, rigging, camera, editing, rendering and planning a project. I'm very aware of project development right now and it is a feeling of power and control, so our concept creation skills have improved a lot. There's this other question that we've built into our workflow: "Do we really need this?" It's a tough one obviously, because cool ideas do get cut with this approach. But it's all for the greater good of an easily readable concept that produces a clear product. (It's the industry's money saving attitude as well.)

Production

So it's time to show what we have got. Well there's a few drawings here and there, some graphs that show audience heartbeat rate (haha... yeah)... stuff like that. Student - teacher relationship still plays a role in our project. But we have extended it, so the concept actually works on several levels. It's also about working hard and overcoming barriers and finding yourself in a moment that lasts only a second that will decide the rest of your life. If you have the power to step up and fight, you will walk out of the situation a champion, if you don't... then you lose.

So here's the recipe:

- a simple metaphor to express these ideas
- a narrative (to guide the audience into, then through, and out of the metaphor = conclusion for the masses)
- a visual language & universe that reflects the concepts of life goals & hard working & discipline & teacher - student relationships
- some hollywood (choice of actors & similar... my position on this one is firm. rest assured that we are building justification for every visual aspect into our concept)
- extreme visual coolness (yeah, our goal is to make the most stunning visuals you've seen anyone produce on the course. it's that simple. good lighting, high definition landscape and characters, beyond what we have learned at the course. motion blur, weather effects, particles and post production, and all that other eye candy.)
- style (style will be mostly visible in the pace of the film. style is a moment-relevance amplifier)
- shortness (3 minutes max)

This recipe is designed to produce impact.

I will explain the content of each ingredient in a later post. (The vagueness of the ingredients is not a sign of us hiding anything. It's a sign of our ability to work with theory before working with art.) Then I will post some images. Also there will be another list of skills that we will need to acquire during the project. Because lists are cool."

What's with this Jonny the Kid and JonnyBoy business I wonder? :-(