The begining of something
What kind of film do I want to make? I want to create something that I'm proud of, that reflects on the past three years of study and a film that includes LGBTQ+ and Feminist themes. But how do I do that, how do I start developing something like that? I decided to look back at work that's inspired me to create by creating a personal Tumblr blog for inspiration as well as a Pintrest account to keep a virtual 'scrap book' of things I find inspirational as a cartoonist. To include feminist/LGBTQ+ themes in a way that's as representative as I'd like I need to write and include female and LGBTQ+ characters that make a difference to the story, of the animation I'm working on.
I've decided to work with a blend of Photoshop and After Effects for this project, focusing on digitally hand-drawn animation and that my target audience is (16 and under). I've decided to approch Leeds College of Music and ex-music students on recording a soundtrack for the animation, as well as casting voice actors early on in pre-production.
I took a moment to look at myself as an artist and how much I felt like I've changed in the past three years, before begining to idea generate. At the time of writing in the notebook I was struggling with my own approach to artwork as well as my own confidence as a creative, so made a list of things I had already accomplished in the past three years. I also included a list of inspirations to me as a creative, which focused me on what sort of film I wanted to create - something like this (see 'inspirations' page).
Ideas all around and all over the place
I finally began writing down ideas for a film, based on a mind-map I'd drawn up to focus on themes/ideas I already wanted to include in this animation. Despite turning the idea down (to myself) I personally like the single sentence ideas of 'dogs are in love but locked in different cars' and 'street harassment but from the perspective of shoes'. After a nights sleep, I woke up already in love with one idea I had - about a fox who wanted to play guitar. All I had to go to work on was just that, 'a fox wants to play guitar' and I already knew the idea focused on prejudice against 'others' in the arts. After defining possible storylines, I settled on a very loose set of moments that I wanted to happen in the film. Roughly the main character is shown to have difficulties being appreciated as an artist because others assume wrongly about his character, purely because of their existing assumptions of foxes. The main character has a brief moment of dread before being introduced to a place where he's appreciated as an artist. This was a little before begining the script for the film, because I wanted to focus on characters first.
Benjamin
Benjamin is a fox, he's 23 years old (fox years), is slightly skinny, enjoys knitwear and enjoys peppermint tea. Defining his character was difficult to begin with, because I'm rather bad at wording characters however - '' He's quiet but honest, he speaks clearly but there's a hint of nervousness in his tone as if he's concerned he may accidentally offend someone or verbally step on someones toes. He's confident about his music but doesn't often have the opportunity to preform. ''
Music
After speaking to a few students from Leeds College of Music, I settled on a talented artist and all together lovely personal that I see most days - James Grimshaw. I approached him with a brief for him - to respond to the animatic of the film, with an original soundtrack. He said yes. I had an idea in mind for music, which was slightly like the opening theme song to the 80's stop motion musical theme of 'Bag Puss' but also a tiny bit like the music from the 2013 film 'Her'.
Voices
A friend of mine, Lewis is a stand up comedian - at the time I was drafting up Benjamins character I saw one of his stand up performances online and loved the way he presented this persona he'd written for that show. I approached him, asking if he was interested in voicing one of my character and he was more than happy to be part of the project! I've also approached several others who are excited about being in board with the project, who I think would fit perfectly with background dialoge or small speaking rolls - including the lovely Pete. For one character I wanted to have a female artist voicing her that was currently part of the music scene - I approached girls that gig over their facebook page and a member got back to me about voicing the character ' Clover '.
Concept Art START
I'm begining to start concept art now and development of the script, which is my favorite part of any project!
Notebook Pages
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