Third Year Film Pitch

Last Friday was the day we had all been waiting for, last Friday was the day we pitched our third year film to all 200 students on our coarse, the lecturers and some guest panelists from within the industry. I felt very prepared for this one, as George Quelch (who I pitched with) had been working on the pitch and the film idea in general for about six months, although it has changed a lot in that time we now have a pretty solid idea to pitch.
There were around twenty pitches and only eight to ten can go into production so were all definitely competing for the spots. I'm feeling fairly hopeful of our chances of going into production, but you never know.
Below are some pictures of George and I pitching.

Astronaut Models

As part of the prep for pitching our third year film idea I made some concept Plasticine models of the two astronaut characters and one of the alien characters. I modeled the two astronaut characters as close to the concept drawings that I have had a solid idea for as I could, I am very happy with how they turned out as are pretty close to the concept pieces.

For the Alien designs I didn't really have any drawings to work form mainly because my drawing skills aren't up to scratch and I really struggled to get the ideas I had in my head onto paper, however once i decided to try it in Plasticine I got it spot on to my ideas on my first try. I am very happy with how this one turned out especially with the shape of his head.

 

I am definitely going to do more model making as I found that I really enjoyed making these three and am very happy with how they turned out.

Oxygen Three Acts

During the summer George Quelch and I spent quite a bit of time working out the story line for our third year film idea in much more detail. From there I drew three concept pieces, one for each of the three acts, I tried to get across the basic structure of what was going on in the film in these three pictures.

The first image (above) shows when the astronauts first land on the planet and crush an aliens house when the door opens. they continue to unload all their equipment which further irritates the aliens.

The second image (above) shows the escalating events in the second act, after the aliens realize the astronauts are going to dig up their little village to mine, they start to attack to try and get the control panel for the drill, and to get rid of the astronauts.

The third image (above) shows how the film will end (Spoilers!) the escalating events finally peak when the tug of war ends with them flinging the control panel into the rocket which causes it to tip over and start up, it ends up flying away and over the horizon leaving the astronauts stranded.

Crew Shot

Over the last term I have been helping on the 3rd year film 'I Am Dyslexic' this is the shot I have done for it so far, however it still needs a lot of work done to it as the walk cycle is a bit rough and the cleanup doesn't really match the look of the rest of the film.

Live Brief Shot

This term I have been working on a short film called 'Dreams of Daddy' and this is the first shot that i have done for it. This shot took me quite a while to do because it has three diagonal walk cycles in it and because of the boiling effect we were going for which meant i had to draw frames that i would normally have left the same as the frame before or after it. Overall I am fairly happy with the result although i think the walk cycles could use some work because they seem a bit floaty. The background is black because it was rendered with transparency so that the director could composite it onto a different background easily.

Character designs

 

These are the initial designs for the characters in my third year film pitch, After doing some research into different space suit designs, I had a go at doing some of my own. Taking inspiration from different designs both real and fictional for each one I came up with some that i liked whilst keeping the same cartoony style throughout. I then took the two from above that i liked the most and tried three different colour schemes on both and found that different colours work better on each. I prefer the orange on the top row but the blue on the bottom row. I then did some final designs for the two different characters.

Setting designs

For my third year film idea, I've been doing some setting research and designs. these are three of them. This story is set in the middle of space, somewhere between the Andromeda galaxy and Earth. despite the vast emptiness of space there is a large amount of hazards for the two astronauts to navigate, from asteroids heading strait for them and wondering satellites to the vacuum itself. Because the film is stop motion all of the backgrounds are going to be green screened out and then replaced with matte paintings like the ones below, this will fit perfectly with the cartoony style of the whole film.