Then we started back at college and got the feedback from the pre production hand in. Generally it was very positive but as usual Alan picked up on a few of the issues that I was trying to sweep under the carpet. The main challenge for me, according to Alan, was pulling together the design of the piece to reflect the mood of the film. The main problem for me was that I was beginning to make a film that I thought was ugly! After a bleak realisation that I would rather fail the course than complete this film as it was I decided I had to take a leap of faith, dump my last months work and re do the backgrounds.
I headed off to Waterstones to sneakily take some photos of their children's books...
The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers caught my eye, it is really inspiringly beautiful.
And spent a day trawling through some really amazing work online...
The Art of Pho is an interactive animated adaptation of a graphic novel, I love it! (click the link to go to the website an watch it.) Its so perfectly like what I want to do.
Some other animators I've had my eye on:
I realised that the missing element was the focus on 2D hand drawn illustrations. It had all got too heavy and dark. I did a few new concept drawings and then launched into organising the layouts of the new backgrounds. Once I had started everything seemed to fall into place again and they poured out of me pretty fast. There are still some that I don't love and some that need a bit of work but the are all done and scanned and just need layers of fog and moving text before I can get going on the animation...
This morning I had a meeting with Joe Atkinson who is helping me produce the film, he is a star and made us bacon pancakes for breakfast! I was beginning to panic about the sound coming together on time, but I have now had a new draft of the music from Dan and a new sound designer on the project who is very positive about what we can do with it. Joe and I will also be trying out some voice actors for the part of Hannah which is very exciting!
On the down side I am now pretty behind on the schedule, Edinburgh Film Festival submission deadline is the 13th of Feb and I need to have a pretty clear line test of the film to give them if I have any hope of getting in. My sound designer also needs that to get started before the studios fill up with final projects and and then there's the dissertation half way hand in due in 6 days that needs considering, leaving me about 10 days to get this loose animatic, pile of A5 backgrounds and stack of unread textbooks into a beautifully timed and presentable festival submission and half a dissertation!
Its got to be done, so it will be. Bring it on!
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