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Storytelling and Cinematography - Treatment

22/11/2010

1 Comment

 
A treatment is a short presentation of an idea. They read like a short story, except told in the present tense and describing events as they happen.

I came up with the basic idea for the treatment when we were writing down a list of story ideas in class. One of these being a zombie apocalypse seen from a zombie's point of view, and hence Dead Meat was born. I took the basic concept and built it around the mandatory three act structure and the monomyth or "the hero's journey" if you will.

Dead Meat (working title)

A seemingly normal town in the middle of a desert is populated by ZOMBIES. One of these characters, DEAD MEAT, is living a somewhat normal zombie life dedicating most of his time eating brains. He's quite different from the others though; He's constantly made fun of by everyone around him because of his above average INTELLIGENCE.

One day he wakes up by some loud sounds he's never heard before. He gets curious and halts to the window to see what could be causing the sound. What he discovers is that a bunch of humans have entered the town and are now killing every zombie on sight. They're led by the GENERAL, a big bulky guy with a grenade belt and a love for large armored vehicles.

Dead Meat is seen fleeing the scene, dodging zombie limbs, gun shots and grenades. He successfully leaves the town unseen and starts wandering into the desert surrounding the place. After he's walked for a while, his pea-sized brain starts growing a conscience and he decides to return and save whatever is left of the inhabitants.

He sneaks up on one of the humans vehicles and grabs a couple of heavy machine guns, some explosives and a screwdriver. Dead Meat is now on a killing spree, shooting, blowing up and stabbing through everything that isn't already dead. By a impressive demonstration of raw force and a little bit of luck he's able to face the General and an epic battle ensues. Moments later, Dead Meat seems to be losing and just before the General is about to land the final blow, Dead Meat is able to reach and pull out the safety pins out of one of the General's grenades using the screwdriver. They both blow up into smithereens.

With the humans defeated, life eventually goes back to normal.


After this was done, we were randomly grouped together in groups of four (I was grouped with Ole Petter, Miliam and Tim Daniel) to read and discuss each others treatments and decide for one to use for a storyboard, animatic and a 3D pre-visualization.
We eventually ended up with using Dead Meat because... well... it has zombies in it, and a pretty obvious three act structure. We then proceeded with adjusting the story a bit like introducing a second zombie character and having Dead Meat actually survive and become accepted by his fellow zombies.

Dead Meat
Final

A seemingly normal town in the middle of a desert is populated by ZOMBIES. One of these characters, DEAD MEAT, is living a somewhat normal zombie life dedicating most of his time eating brains. He's quite different from the others though; He's constantly made fun of by everyone around him because of his above average INTELLIGENCE. Especially by the MOBBER ZOMBIE.

One day he wakes up by some loud sounds he's never heard before. He gets curious and halts to the window to see what could be causing the sound. What he discovers is that a bunch of humans have entered the town and are now killing every zombie on sight. They're led by the GENERAL, a big bulky guy with a grenade belt and a love for large armored vehicles.

Dead Meat tries to flee the scene, dodging zombie limbs, gun shots and grenades. He successfully leaves the town unseen and starts wandering into the desert surrounding the place. After he's walked for a while, he starts growing a conscience and he decides to return and save whatever is left of the inhabitants.

He sneaks up on one of the humans standing guard and punches a hole through his chest. The soldier's death scream alarms the rest of the attackers and they're now storming towards Dead Meat. By this time, Dead Meat has entered a blood rage and starts killing off the soldiers one by one. Just moments after, Dead Meat is standing in a pile of dead soldiers when he hears gunshots close by. He turns around and sees the General standing on top of the mobber zombie with a gun. The General raises the gun to the mobber zombie's head and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens - the gun is out of bullets, so the General throws the gun away and pulls out a BAZOOKA from his pocket. Just as the General is about to blow the mobber zombie into smithereens, Dead Meat tackles him, and they both ends up on the ground. The General gets on top and starts hitting Dead Meat with all his strength. Unable to defend himself, Dead Meat is desperately looking around for weapons and spots the bazooka lying nearby. He reaches it, pulls it into the General and presses the trigger. The General is sent flying through the air, before ending up in a large explosion.


After this event, Dead Meat has become accepted by the other zombies, they gather around him and starts dancing to Thriller.

1 Comment

Digital Acting 2 - Full-body Animation - Final Render

3/11/2010

0 Comments

 
The Character
"Mr. Sloman" (The store manager) is apparently sick, and as my character is the oldest employee he has to temporary take over the management of the store. As such he tries his hands on some sort of team morality speech in front of the other employees. Morality level just might have dropped even lower after his not-so-successful attempt.
Picture
'The anagram of meat is team...?'
Animation Principle Examples
These are just short examples of some of the animation principles I've used in my animation.

      Anticipation - The hands moves up closer to the chest, anticipating the downward motion moments after.

      Staging - The staging has been set up in a simple manner to draw the viewer's attentionto the main character - rendering him the greatest importance in the scene and brings the point across to the viewer. Hopefully.

      Timing - Timing is a important part of lip-sync as unsynchronized or sloppy timed lip motion would look like he's dubbed from a foreign language - we wouldn't want that, would we? Timing also applies to the body-language, doing the right action at the right time.

      Appeal - The character has to be appealing to the audience, and as such has to be in a situation and do actions the audience can familiarize them self with. Here he's trying to retell a quote by "Mr. Sloman", but messes up.

Other animation principles I've been using includes follow through and overlapping action, slow in and slow out, arcs, and secondary action.
Final Render
Props has been properly modeled, placeholder objects removed and scene lighted - This is my final output rendered at a comfortable 720p high definition resolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DrzmugubfI&hd=1
Constructive Self-Critique
Alright, here goes nothing...
There's something with the "I don't know" section that seems to be off. I'm not quite sure what's wrong, but I just don't find the animation too convincing at that part. Also, maybe I could've added some more weight to the notation board. Right now he's briefly holding it with three fingers as if it were a piece of paper.
The legs can seem kind of static, so perhaps shifting from standing on the left to the right leg somewhere in there could've improved the animation a bit. I'm not sure about this though, as the point of importance always stays at the torso and the hands.
The mouth shapes could've been improved by further adjusting the wide/narrow and open/close properties.
Besides from that, I'm happy with the final result.

Damn am I tired of listening to the bloody sound clip.
0 Comments

Digital Acting 2 - Full-body Animation - Progress Update

2/11/2010

1 Comment

 
A video speaks more than a million words. But just to write something I've been working with getting the blinking to look about right, also made some changes to the "I don't know what he's talking about" section of the dialog and done some more curve editor work.
1 Comment
    Picture

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    Ole Kristian Busk
    3D Generalist
    Born 1988, Norway

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