Recap of first meeting (part 1)

As promised, here's a brief overview of the first meeting (for reference). Please amend this or let me know if I've missed anything out! :]

Animation meeting 08/02/2012

We discussed overall production timescale. Obviously without knowing the length of the animation, the media/techniques and the amount of animation we can reasonably produce per week it's impossible to set anything specific yet, but generally we should look to begin animating or producing tests by week 5 or 6 (Monday 19th March). If we aim to have the animation (plus all post-production) completed by the 1st May this gives us about 7 weeks of animation time, allowing us extra time to assemble the portfolios/DVD cases and fix anything that goes catastrophically wrong!

Here's a link to the unit timetable on myUCA that outlines basic project structure: Unit timetable

There's also this time management timetable that I think could be very useful in deciding our production schedule and working days. Obviously we can adapt it to fit in with lessons and personal arrangements, but have a look at it in the meantime and let me know if you have any ideas! Here's the link!

Again, this is just an initial ballpark figure. It could change drastically in the coming weeks once we've got a better grasp on the scope of the project. Alex needs to liaise with the group in the coming weeks to determine exact tasks to be set and develop a finalised production timetable with feasible deadlines. We talked about the possibility of having a visual timetable/checklist with icon-coded columns to show progress of each task so everyone can keep track of how the project is progressing and we can more easily identify areas of difficulty.

Jazzy will be writing a recap of the production roles and media discussion we had, so look forward to that in within the next couple of days :] May I also suggest posting up some of your pitch/production artwork and an overview of the story to the blog, for easy access/reference?

In the meantime, homework for this week is to do some independent research, character designs and story development. Remember the personality of the scarecrow and have that influence your designs - think not only of facial expression but body language and structure! There's a fantastic book in the library called Pencils to Pixels and it's a one-stop-shop guide to literally everything you could ever want to know about animating - it has an entire chapter on character design that might be helpful to have a look at! If you can think of any titles for the film, jot them down as well :]

We'll be meeting on Tuesday again (time to be arranged) to look at everybody's ideas and designs. We'll be combining elements from each to help us produce the first draft of the script. Jae and Sam both had some fantastic ideas and suggestions right from the get go, so we're really looking forward to seeing what you come up with! Thanks again guys for such a great first meeting, I'm really excited to be working with you and I can only hope I'm able to help do justice to this project.

If you have any questions, suggestions or just want to yell at me for being too bossy, please let me know!