Visual Narrtive: Living Voices Week 1
I understand the last audio as two guys commenting on the dance moves of their wives and inspired by the French animation movie ‘The Illusionist’, I planned to stage my animation in a theatre. The two guys are in the audience of a school talent show and their wives are dancing on the stage. As the animation movie is about performance, I figure it would suit the audio very well.
I really enjoy watching Ballet dance performances and when I researched Edgar Degas’s paintings in my informed Practice classes, this classic form of art hits me. Decided to make an animation that involves ballet, I got this storyboard that can illustrate my idea clearly.
My animation is going to be a chat between husbands about one of their wives performing on-stage. With the content of the conversation, one may find the performer an expert but actually she is quite unfamiliar with ballet. I want to make this atmosphere awkward and funny.
Cover of Diary of a Wimpy Kid Illustration of the protagonist
I took great inspiration from the character design of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The simple and minimalistic style looks clean and is easier to play around than realistic style.
My design gives the faces a bit more character. The chubby character have downward tilting eyes and the slim one has longer eyes. I make the body design (structure and shape）more realistic than the faces but still cartoonish because i have some turning of the body in my animation and with a more realistic structure, there is a sense of three-dimention which is helpful for me to determine the back and profile side.
Theatre Interior Concept Ballerina Sketch
I then carry out a concept illustration for my animation where the two characters are sitted in the theatre and watching the performance.
When i think about the relationship between the main characters and the performer, the audio ,which already suggested that they are husbands and wives, reminds me of the school talent show i had in China where students and their parents are invited to a theatre and watch dramas, dances and singing performances. Therefore, i did a sketch of little kinds performing ballet on stage.
CONCLUSION:
The first week of pre-peoduction is flowing well for me as i got what i wanted to do right after hearing the audio. Therefore，i decided my storyboard and the character design quickly and spent some time on the concept designs.