.”Create a 1–2-minute animated film that promotes you as an auteur, defining your individual
style whilst experimenting with techniques and formats that help you develop directions in your
work. You should explore themes that have personal value to you. You will consider the
relationship between sound and moving image.
You can choose to focus on one specific aspect of your research or combine different aspects
together but be careful not to overcomplicate things – simple stories with a clear message will
work best.”
short brief given. Key ideas: personal project, we set our own story, style and process. short and sweet- max 1/2mins long. must show collaboration with other studies: work on others projects or get people to help with your own.
For my initial ideas I wanted to create a short and simple story which could be told in a simple to understand way, as there is only a minute or so of animation time to work with the story would work best if it could be told simply with just one sentence, no need to over complicate it as that would only add to the time I can make it.
ideas which were sketched down were:
A girl who communicates with the dead ( shes quiet and emotionless whereas the ghost who acompanies her is lively and gets her into trouble by accident)
A slice of life fantasy which focuses on design and character, no specific story persay but it would explore how a imaginative fantasy world could be shown to the audience without words.
a scarecrow who comes alive and causes mischief, instead of scaring the crows it befriends them. instead of protecting the animals and produce it causes chaos.
I decided to go with the scarecrow as not only was it outside of my comfort zone (where I usually draw fantasy and supernatural topics) it also had a more solid storyline to follow and I felt more of a connection with the scarecrow becoming ‘good’ or seeing the error in their ways as a short story.
I started mindmapping what main overarching them i would want to explore with this story. I felt the idea of a inanimate being coming alive would bring alot of questions around life and their purpose: would they stick to what they were built for? would they disagree with what they are doing ect. I wanted to explore this as not only would it help structure the story it would also give the scarecrow a meaningful character arc with them finding their purpose over the course of the animation.
Scarecrows and the Need to Frighten
The familiar cornfield scarecrow has a long and storied history both in Europe and in the New World. 3,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians hung tunics on reeds to scare quail away from crops along the Nile. The ancient Greeks created wooden statues of Priapus,a fertility god, to stand in their fields to frighten birds.
When figuring out their design I wanted to explore the purpose of a scare crow, I came across this article which stated the historical use of scarecrows across the world. With this I wanted to explore the design of the scarecrow, would they look appealing? or be made to look frightening? I used the idea of old worn materials when designing the scarecrow as I would imagine you wouldn’t get brand new clothes for an object which is just there to guard. this helped give character to them as I was able to play around with different proportions to make them look purposefully scary or ugly so the audience would believe the would be good at the job, but also build symphathy for them as their personality shines.
I looked at different references of how scarecrows are designed commercially as well as for daily use on farms, they aren’t designed to be aesthetically pleasing like most but are made with a function to fulfill, which would influence the mindset as well as how they would be made. With this in mind I created the first few sketches of the scarecrow, I used photo’s from my pumpkin carving on halloween as inspiration as it reminded me of autumn which is when this animation would be taking place, it also helped with the functionality of the design where the ‘face’ would have to be easy to carve. Inspired by old english circus’ I opted for large jester like proportions, this helped better convey the type of character this is and helped with giving the clothing design more texture.
to act as a mentor for the scarecrow I created a farmer who would be the main guiding point for both the scarecrow as well as the audience to know what they are supposed to do. Getting general feedback from different classmates for which sketch design to go with and for the colour choices the genral consensus was that the more confident design with a shovel over the shoulder worked best as they had a strong understandable personality.
concept work on how the scarecrow could find their purpose, exploring the world around them enjoying small things like running through a pile of leaves or feeling the sun’s heat.
After storyboarding this first idea and receiving feedback I had to shorten the first few ideas as for only a minute of animation the idea I originally had would have been too long to complete.
For testing out what I wanted my animation to look like I wanted to explore the physicality of the world the audience is introduced. I wanted to showcase personality and texture in my work so both the characters and environments where believable and inviting.
I played around with different textured brushes in procreate and other mediums to get the look of the first two animation tests. visually the animation regarding the scarecrow in the first was closer to what I ended up with compared with the second which background matched my intened vision. I wanted the audience to feel like this was a farm, filled with life.
I got covid hallway through the project which affected me for around 3 weeks cutting into how much time I would have to develop this project. This can be seen more so in the animatic/ storyboard being rough and unfinished in terms of being a finalised animatic. I learnt from here to better schedule my time to incoporate unforeseen outcomes for the future. while I was behind and had to rework my storybaord multiple times I got into designing the backgrounds.
After recieving more feedback I reworked the story to simply be how a scarecrow gains the confidence to scare away crows!
Near completed scene for the final film. finalised look for scarecrow in the film as well as the farmer (not shown in this test). to help differentiate the two personality wise I had the linework for the scarecrow be more gestural and shakey to better reflect the scared and unconfident character they are, it also helped to create texture with their design opposed to clean lines. For the farmer since they are more confident and laidback they had cleaner lines to helped show the difference betweeen the two.
Using creative common sounds I edited together the final film.
What I particularly liked about this project were the free reigns to test out my skills as an animator, While i wasn’t able to fully finsish this work like I had hoped. One thing I did learn was the importance of the pre production side of animation especially considering situations which can come up out of your control, I have learnt to put more focus on the technical and writting side of my story’s so that in the future when I go to make another project I won’t be cutting into time which would be better spent on the animation aspect of the film. I would have also asserted myself to collaborate more with other students specifically to help finish my scenes as I was not able to finish completely.