Storyboard changes

Feedback from my tutor Claire 

After Claire and I discussed my two storyboards we decided to rearrange and add some things to the second one.

I had a feeling that not showing the full main character was not a good idea so we added an establishing shot of her so we can see how much of a beaten down and sad character she is  (through her clothing and body language). 

New Storyboard:

Backgrounds

I would have drawn up background on paper but with my storyboards I felt like I didn't really have anything to draw. All my backgrounds I want to be quite simple but full of grungy textures and darkness. I originally wanted to achieve this by overlaying images from Google to create new ones but I feel like that might be a bit too close to the whole copyright thing. 

I created these backgrounds with Photoshop brushes and the last few with an image from Google and brushes overlaying them. 

Version 1: Darker 

Version 2: Lighter

The peeling on the left I think is too big in comparison to the size of the character will be

Version 1: Google image with Photoshop brushes overlayed

Version 2: More textures overlayed 

I created these images slightly longer than usual video dimensions because I wanted to pan across them without having to zoom into the images. These are just mock up backgrounds.

Storyboards

I didn't use the mother character too much or most of the monster characters - I used the shadow monsters mainly as the bullies.

Storyboard 1

In the second storyboard I didn't use the mother character at all. I think having more characters distracts from the story and also the visuals so I might cut her out all together.

Final Characters: Profile and Front Views

Girl (Bullied character):

The Mother: 

I wanted the mother to remain unknown. I wanted her to be seen as materialistic but stern. I felt like the outfit and her thin frame communicate this idea.

The Monster Bullies: 

Character Development

The Bully:
I experimented with angry faces and poses but found it hard to make them look childish and basically not weird. 

I thought of having the bullies portrayed at monsters and shadows rather than human children. This will add a great visual effect and make the bullying seem more scary to the viewer.

Main girl (bullied character):

I thought I had sorted this character out quite quickly but I felt like she needed more work. She also looked too much like a character already made by Tim Burton. 

I experimented further with the character face shape.

Excuse her lack of hair. I wanted to see what hair style would suit her...

I played around with hairstyles. Influenced by typical children's hairstyles. 

Could I portray my story without humans?

Character Style Influence

Cutesy Style:

• Looks like its been drawn quickly on a tablet
• Little or no mouths
• Big eyes
• Eyes are one solid colour
• Big heads in comparison to body
• Scribbles on their cheeks to show their emotion
• Not in detail (no fingers)

Tim Burton / Tim Burton influenced Style: 

• Big eyes with little pupils - Always wide open
• Eyes have dark around them
• Huge heads
• Skinny necks
• Skinny arms and legs (like sticks)
• Little feet
• Little or wide mouths
• Very rarely smiling
• Bigger shoulders with little waists

I feel like these styles are really similar in some ways and I think they could easily merge together for a video. These styles (Tim Burtons style especially) would go really well with the theme of my rhyme and also the styles of medium I like too. 

Deciding on the final Narrative

I had a few ideas to chose from so I tried to narrow them down by looking at their pros and cons. I compared them against each other. 

More brainstorming

Taking from some original ideas:
Original ideas to draw more ideas from: 

• A man has a girlfriend, a lot of men try to hit on her, the boyfriend gets jealous, he breaks up with her, they are both unhappy (we all fall down)
• A successful business is going bankrupt, they try to hide it from their employees and business partners but go into liquidation, everyone loses their jobs and the business partners are owed money they cannot get back

The new general idea: Something bad is happening, a person tries to conceal it, but it becomes known and out anyway

• Something bad is happening, a person tries to conceal it, but it becomes known and out anyway
• A girl is getting bullied at school, she tries to hide it from her mother, her mother finds her diary about her bullying
• A girl loses her virginity at a party, she doesn't want anyone to find out, the boy she lost it to tells everyone, she gets labeled a slut
• A boy is cheating on his girlfriend, he tries to conceal it, the girlfriend discovers his texts to the other girl
• A student fails his exams/or didn't get into university, his parents are strict about good grades so he doesn't tell them about it, they discover it when they open his mail saying he failed/didn't get into university
• A man murders someone, they try to get away with it, the police figure out it was him, the police catch him and he is broadcast on the news
• A boy is gay, he writes his feelings in his diary about it, doesn't want anyone to find out, his mother discovers his diary confessing it
• A young girl finds out she is pregnant, doesn't know what to do about it yet but still wants to keep it a secret, her boyfriend/parents find her pregnancy test in the bin 

Chosen Nursery Rhyme

Indepth Research

Ring o Rosie

Ring-a-ring o' roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down

Initial observations:

• "A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down" - Death, plague
• Skipping
• Sounds happy but also sounds dark too
• Roses, the name Rose
• Tissues
• When singing as a child, skipping and falling over, I think of laughter, games and friends
• Children
• Garden and flowers
• Confusion - I don't know what "posies" are

Secondary Observations:

"We all fall down" - fun with friends - playing, joy, dying/death - factual, sad, no more

Skipping - fast - tiring, fun - bonding, brings people together, friendly

Roses - fertile - wild, romance - together

Tissues - sick - unwell, disease, spreading sickness

Children - innocence, inexperienced, honesty

Garden - fertile, growth, ordered

Posies - My confusion because I don't know what posies are

Idea Stage 1: 

The plague: I have heard before that this nursery rhyme is about the plague, so I could play around with that idea or alter it slightly to make it about another disease or about death in general - that everyone will eventually die "we all fall down."

The children's song: Children skipping to the rhyme - it could end happily with the children laughing etc or have a dark twist and mix with the death idea and when they fall, they die also

The Proposal: A girl on a date with her boyfriend (spinning around links to the spinning and skipping of the children's reaction to the rhyme), boyfriend pulls out wedding ring and proposes, the new fiance walks away on the phone talking about the proposal, gets hit by a car or collapses    

Research the Rhyme: 

• The first printing of the rhyme was in Kate Greenaway's 1881 edition of Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,

A pocket full of posies;

Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down

• The rhyme has often been associated with the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the Black Death in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before the Second World War make no mention of this
• "The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened."
• The line Ashes, Ashes in colonial versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer variously to cremation of the bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or blackening of their skin, and the theory has been adapted to be applied to other versions of the rhyme. In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague
• The Plague was not selective in its victims; both rich and poor, young and old, succumbed - this gives me the idea that anyone can be affected/unhappy no matter what your upbringing or privileges 

Idea Stage 2:

• Flashbacks of a happy couple in photographs, pictures slowly morph into hospital visits, she dies  (could show this with the man visiting her grave), the man then either commits suicide or goes into a deep depression and shuts everyone out
• A man has a girlfriend, a lot of men try to hit on her, the boyfriend gets jealous, he breaks up with her, they are both unhappy (we all fall down)
• "Ashes! Ashes!" -somehow incorporate fire/smoke into the story. (American version says "Ashes! Ashes!" instead of "A-tishoo! A-tishoo!". I wouldn't change the version I am working  on but I think it would be interesting to include it somehow. 
• A family who is happy with life somehow gets caught up in a fire
• A successful business is going bankrupt, they try to hide it from their employees and business partners but go into liquidation, everyone loses their jobs and the business partners are owed money they cannot get back

Research around the Rhyme:
Common Themes: Death, negativity, sickness, everyone in the end isn't happy, everyone can be affected/unhappy, concealment 
Linking to current events/ trends in media/ education/ entertainment: 

• MH370 Malaysia Airlines missing airplane with 2 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations. Went missing on the 8th March 2014.
• MH17 Malaysia Airlines crash over the Ukraine: Killing 298 people on board, a lot of different ages and nationalities on board. The two sides in Ukraine's ongoing conflict (the Ukrainian government and the pro-Russian separatists) accused each other of shooting down the plane while denying their own responsibility. Crashed on the 17th July 2014. 
• GE222 Taiwan's Airlines crash while trying to flight in stormy weather. Kills 47 people and destroying houses below.

How others have interpretative the Rhyme: 
From researching again I couldn't find any other ways people had interpreted the rhyme. The only examples I had seen was the Plague theme and also the positive children's nursery rhyme (children skipping and singing)

Style Reseach:

• Dark
• Silhouettes
• Foggy
• Maybe black and white/ limited colour
• Stop motion look alike (jittery movements)
• Layers
• Sketchy
• Textured

How will I create my imagery:
I am not fully decided yet but I am thinking of:

• Drawing on paper and scanning
• Drawing on Photoshop
• Maybe use Illustrator for a vector influence
• Found imagery that I have altered to make my own (maybe redrawn them or produced my own version of them)
• Most likely a mix of styles to give an informal, messy effect

Text and Font:

I want my text to be subtle so I don't think I will animate it in anyway -however I am open to trying it if I think it will suit the story or style. I want to use single words from the rhyme or segments rather than have the whole rhyme in there. I think this is be used to enforce certain ideas. 

Sound and Foley:
I have found two parts of songs I would like to have in my animation. But I feel these are either creepy or smooth almost haunting soundtracks. I feel like my animation would have to be negative for these soundtracks to fit in. 
Tablo - Home (feat. Lee Sora) 3.40-4.23

Themes and Ideas

Nursery Rhymes

Ring o Rosies:
Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies, 
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down

• The Plague theory
• Children skipping along to the rhyme -Turns dark and when they fall, they die
• Starts off positive: "Ring o Rosies": Girl on date with boyfriend, (spinning around: links to the spinning of the children's response to the rhyme), Boyfriend pulls wedding ring out of pocket, the new fiancée walking across the road on the phone telling people about her engagement, collapses or is hit by a car.

Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, 
Couldn’t put Humpty together again

• Literal: Man on a wall, falls, no one can put him back together again (Have you noticed how the rhyme doesn't mention he is an egg? Where did that idea come from?)
• A person starts with great power but tragically falls -tragic flaw
• A man with a huge ego, one day gets rejected in front of a lot of people, is shamed

Little Miss Muffet:
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey, 
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

• Someone sat next to an overweight girl while she was eating, the spider-looking man scared the girl, she tried to run away from fear but couldn't -she had to waddle away
• A girl/lady gets scared by a spider-looking man but they realise that he was just grabbing his phone/newspaper from next to her

Jack and Jill:
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown, 
And Jill came tumbling after

• Jack and Jill were on a mission, Jack was killed failing his part, Jill failed her part of the mission also due to her grief of Jacks death
• Jill went to help suicidal Jack, Jack committed suicide in the end, Jill got into deep depression/or suicide (came tumbling after) 
• Jack and Jill are running a race up a hill, Jack gets there first and runs through the "First Place" ribbon, Jack is so tired that he falls down the hill and collects Jill on the way

Orange and Lemons:
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s
You owe me five farthings, 
Say the bells of St. Martin’s

• Owing someone a lot of money, not paying them back in time and resulting in that person being in a lot of trouble -A drug deal idea could apply to this also

Visual Mediums and Styles

Silhouettes: 

Rough Sketch Style:

Textured: 

The Blackwater Gospel: The black and white textures at the start mixed with the idea of silhouettes is a really strong style that works really well with the story. 

I also like the very quick flashes of birds wings and other scary elements. (0.44)

Stills from 'The Blackwater Gospel'

Layers:

Screen shots from 'Red'

Dada Style: Collage, messy cut outs

Research Animation

Types of Animaton: 

Stop Motion: 

Cut Out: 

Flip Book: