progress so far

This is the first portion of my animation, before the character starts dancing...

more defined plans...

After ironing out my ideas more thoroughly, I have decided to make a few changes to this story/idea. The piece has a new working title, which is "MimeMan", and a bit of a modified character. The main character, the male doll, is now a mime on a shelf in a store. No one seems to take any interest in mime dolls, and he's been on the shelf for a while, even after having his price marked down. His shelf location puts him right next to a tv, and, at night, he turns the tv so he can watch. While flipping channels one night, he comes across a tv show with dancers doing a hip-hop, robot style of dance. Being bored, and confined to his "glass box", he decides that he will try to do this kind of dance. After a few attemps he seems to have it down. Now he can use this new talent to try to sell himself and get off the shelf. Does he want to be more human, or do humans want to be more like him?...

Artist's Statement

“Jabba Jabba” is an animation that seeks to explore the relationship between humans and both natural and unnatural human movement. It is a short narrative piece that questions the similarities and differences between these two types of movement. The story begins with a doll sitting alone on a shelf, discontent with his existence and his inability to perform human tasks. He tries to be human-like, but falls short because of his rigid build and his minimal joints. While sitting on his shelf, he sees a television show where people are performing a modern style of dancing that is unlike anything he’s seen before. The dancers are called the JabbaWockeeZ, and they combine popping and locking, miming, and break dancing to create their own unique style of dance. When the doll sees these movements, he feels that this is something he will be able to do. After finding that this is so, he is forced to look at which role he is trying to convey, either the human or the more robotic. The piece looks at relationships between humans and technology and humans and movement.
This animation will be a mostly stop-motion piece with various other video and imaging elements added in. The dolls rigid movements will be exaggerated with the stop-motion technique. The piece will be created using iStopMotion, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Adobe After Effects.

.... problems

Due to some problems with getting props that I need in order to complete the final animation project that I originally had in mind, I've decided to go in a different direction. I'm now going to be doing a non-narrative piece. I will still use the same style of animation; the piece will be a stop-motion animation using one of the figures that I was going to use in the art theft piece. I am planning on animating my character to perform the JabbaWockeez dance from the first episode of America's Best Dance Crew. If anyone hasn't seen the show, you should youtube some of the dance videos; they're amazing. The JabbaWockeez performance to a mix of Apologize by OneRepublic was my favorite dance, and this is what I will recreate in a way with my character. The piece will be only 1 min, which is much shorter than my original animation was going to be, but I think it will be more difficult to do because of the attention to detail that I'll have to get to show the movements in this dance. Timing and tempo will be crucial for this animation to be a success. So I'm going from 4 characters to 1, from 4 min to 1, and from a narrative to an expressionist piece. Wish me luck....

Final Project Calendar

Estimated Length of Animation: 4 min?
Working Title: “The Concert”
Technique(s) used: Stop-motion

Week of:
Mar 17 - 23

Do 3-4 lighting and motion tests to prepare and work out problems before the final project shots are taken. Work on building the set and props.

Mar 24 - 30

Continue working on the set and have it 2/3 finished by the end of the week.

Mar 30 - Apr 6

Finish set completely and have all props ready for final project shots.

Apr 7 - Apr 13

Start shooting… total shoot time depends on problems and time worked out during initial motion tests. Could finish in 2 days, could take 2 weeks.

Apr 14 - Apr 20

Finish shooting if necessary, otherwise start putting together in After Effects.

Apr 21 - Apr 27

Put animation together in After Effects and do all necessary clean-up work in order to get a neat, finished piece.

Apr 28

Any necessary finishing touches done.

Final Project Finalized

So I've finished up finalizing ideas for my final animation project. I've decided to go with a piece that will be done completely with stop-motion techniques. I'm going to make a narrative piece depicting the events of the infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner museum theft where an estimated $300 million worth of paintings was stolen. If you don't know anything about this still unsolved crime, or if you just want to learn more, you can read about it here...

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/northamerica/us/isabella/isabella.htm

or here...

http://www.stolenthefilm.com/about_synopsis.html

or here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum

My animation will depict a storyline of what could've possibly happened during that night and where the artwork may be now. It'll be kinda like a murder mystery, with murder replaced with theft. There will be 2 main characters (the thieves) and 2 supporting characters (the museum guards). The final piece will hopefully be pretty dark and suspenseful.

Animation Final Project Ideas

The animation presentations that we've done in class have really opened my eyes to all the different animation styles and artists out there. I was particularly influenced by the work of Daniel Greaves. I loved the style of his animation "Manipulation". I think I would like to do some sort of mixed media and mixed technique animation similar to "Manipulation" for my final animation project. I like doing hand drawn stuff, but there's no way I'll be able to get a 30 second hand drawn animation done by the end of the semester, so why not combine techniques to make something a little different. I don't really have any ideas ironed out yet for concept, but there's plenty that I could do. I think I'll mix hand drawn and stop motion techniques like Daniel Greaves does in order to create my final piece. I'll post more on this once I finalize concept ideas.