k00295122

[k00295122]

The second day of the worldbuilding project was focused on research. We went to the local park to get some sketches of the area in different perspectives. I found it a lot more helpful compared to copying from a static image, because I saw the landscape itself move and reveal its dimensions as I tilted my head. At first, I tried to keep my head still so my drawing would be more accurate, but trying to recreate the static camera just wouldn’t work, and I think I would have had flat drawings if I hadn’t kept my head unsteady.

I also had to change materials after a couple sketches. In my earlier highlighter sketches, I wasn’t able to convey that the the three trees were on different levels on a hill. By changing over to a pencil, I was able to use e line quality and thickness to show things that were in the foreground vs the background.

[k00295122]

Some close up sketches of the landscape

[k00295122]

I found a lot of artstyle ms I liked in the library, but the only common point I found I liked in those style was the colour palletes. I tend to lean towards colourful and vibrant palletes more than realistic or moody palletes by default, so I felt like I wasn’t looking past a very surface level understanding of my tastes.

With that in mind, I tried dissecting the art styles into categories. I started with dividing the styles into line, shape and colour, but quickly realised that there was a lot more going on than those three categories.

My favourite art style by far is from the book ‘Beds, Bedrooms and Pajamas’, illustrated by John Manders.

Manders uses directional lines, but mainly varying values to create perspective. He leans heavily into light horizon colours, and often the only tell that something is far away is through the light values.

His colours are vibrant and often use split complementary palletes. I really like his orange accents in all his illustrations, which I’m guessing is underpainting with watercolours. There’s a lot of hue shifting, and no flat colouring at all. Everything is shaded and/or splashed with a different hue.

I also really like the lines he uses in his work, specially the trees and bushes. Since my background is from the park, I might try to recreate a couple of his outdoor backgrounds.

[k00295122]

I tried to figure out where my portrait would stand in the background, and made a fake snapshot of that position. I’ve been trying to figure out how to show the slow of the hill, but colour doesn’t seem to make it obvious enough

[k00295122]

I tried using paper mache and cardboard to make a more realistic portrait of y face. It ended up looking really flat and they glue made a shiny surface that was difficult to paint with watercolours. I think that in the effort to be more realistic, I lost a lot of the style. I think I’ll have to retry the portrait with something else

[k00295122]

Research board

[k00295122]

These were the phonic mouths I made for the mini me sculpture

[k00295122]

I remade my sculpture, this time using just cardboard and keeping the face relatively flat. I wanted to have more elements from the style I was trying to recreate, so I coloured the paper with watercolours and made the eye and nose proportions bigger than the mouth proportions. To add some dimension, I separated the eyes, clothes and head so when the light shines form an angle it would cast a proper shadow.

[k00295122]

Photoshop day with final background

[k00295122]

The first day of the Storytelling project, we were split up into groups and given a nursery rhyme, time period and genre.

Group 3 (Matilda, Sirenity, Jon, Tyler)

We were assigned

Sing a Song of Sixpence as the nursery rhyme

The Bronze Age/Iron Age as the time period

Musical and Dance as the genre

This was a challenging mix of themes, but it also gave us a lot of options in which way we could take the story.

One challenge we came across was the incorporation of musical theatre into the script and storyboard. How do you go about adapting a nurse try rhyme into a 3 minute musical? There were a few options we considered:

A jukebox musical would give us a pre-made song that we could do a storyboard to. The issue was choosing a song that would fit The Bronze Age and Sing a Song of Sixpence. And while it would reduce the amount of dialogue we needed to write, it gave us much less control of the story, tone and characters

Diegetic music. The music would exist in the world and be heard by the characters. We could do this with a festival or ritual scene to include music and dance. While this would be a good way of making the scene feel more realistic, it doesn’t fall into the genre of Musical. Musicals make the music and singing the dialogue. It’s the defining feature of the musical genre. This pushes the music to the side.

Write a 3 minute song for the story. The music and singing wouldn’t be acknowledged by the characters and instead be the main form of dialogue. We’d have much more control over the story and tone because we’d be writing the lyrics. We’d also be able to choreograph any dance moves in gestures or actions. It also keeps us in the genre of musical. This is would be the most time consuming of the options, and given the timeframe, it’s a risky choice.

[k00295122]

My storyboard draft

[k00295122]

https://tusmm-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/r/personal/k00295122_student_tus_ie/Documents/Sing%20a%20Song%20Sixpence.pptx?d=w64e02238e6134eab8c580e79b1691bc3&csf=1&web=1&e=EegDPI

Script:

At the edge of a forest. The Queen and Servant are standing together, clearly scheming 

Q: sing a song of sixpence… 

Q presses a golden torc/money into S’s hands. S stares at the torc and then at Q. 

Q: Pocket full of rye… 

Q ties a satchel of rye to S’s belt. She moves her hands up to S’s shoulders. S looks nervous. 

Q: 4 and 20 blackbirds… 

S puts a hand on the fabric net on their belt. Q twists S to face the forest 

Q: Baked into a pie 

Q lightly pushes S forward and begins to walk away. S stumbles forward and walks to the beat of the song. Instrumental. 

S places the necklace around their neck and takes a deep breath. As theyre walking they take the net off their belt and the fabric flows behind them. S starts repeating the instructions to themselves  

S (quietly singing/whispering): sing my song of sixpence.. 

S stops as they hear the sound of chirping and scraping. They dip their hand into the pocket of rye on their hip. 

S: pocket full of rye… 

S scatters the rye onto the ground in front of them. They bend their knees and get into a fighting stance. 

S: four and twenty blackbirds… 

S reaches for the net and unfolds it. They hold it with two hands spread wide, readying to catch something. 

Instrumental bit. Several Big Birds start creeping out from the shadows and grazing at the rye. The Birds are so close together that they form a massive blob of shadows. 

S (nervously): four and twenty blackbirds… 

S begins creeping closer to the birds, arms still spread out and ready to catch them. 

The birds notice and 1 bird shrieks loudly. The other birds follow suit and start to aggressively flap their feathers. The birds form a giant massive bird. B sees the necklace and lunges at the shiny object  

S (surprised and scared): wait- 

S jumps out of the way and holds the net protectively in front of themselves. B recovers from its lunging attack and strains its neck to look behind it at S. The neck angle is unnatural and the body follows the pose a couple seconds late.  

Instrumental. The Bird keeps lunging at the Servant with its wings flared out behind it. S mimics these shapes with the net as they jump and shuffle back. It’s mostly poses and arm movements (Madame butterfly as a reference) 

B lunges again. S side jumps, plants their hands on the head of the Bird and ‘leap-frogs’ onto its back. S covers its head with the fabric net and the bird thrashes until it’s calmed down.  

The Bird begins to separate again into smaller birds. S scoops up the formless shadows into the net. 

S heaves true net over their shoulder and begins tiredly walking back. 

S: song of sixpence? I should’ve sung a ballad. Ahahahahahaha laugh track 

Now in the ‘kitchen’ 

S opens the door covered in feathers and grumpy. The bag is still slung over their shoulder. 

S (trying to sing, heaving with effort): 

four - and TWENTY. BLACKBIRDS.. 

S heaves the bag onto the table. It begins wriggling. S throws themselves onto the bag until the wriggling stops 

S (talking, contemplative): Baked into a pie. 

The music swells. There’s a montage. 

S grabs ingredients, mills some flour, kneads the dough, etc. setting an open fire and making a fulacht fidagh.  

S approaches the bag again, armed with a PERIOD TYPICAL WEAPON OR COOKING UTENSIL. S couches down, furrows their brow and leaps at the bag, tearing it open. The shadows flow out of the bag slowly. low viscosity. The shadows begin to split into smaller forms.  

S grabs the pie base and sprinkles rye into it. The shadows start lurching towards the pie base. S scraps the extras into the base and drapes the pastry on top, sealing the pie. It’s still moving. 

S drops the pie into the fullacht fiadgh. The water turns black and starts bubbling. S takes a couple steps back, clutching the torc on their neck. The birds cry out, and S turns away. 

S: Sing my song of sixpence 

Thought the shadows crow  

She’s promised me a luxury  

I through I’d never hold  

Swap my tattered tunic for  

A collar made of gold  

In gleaming light the guilt begins to dull 

New scene,  

The king is counting his jewellery pieces and humming a tune to himself. He’s carefully assessing each piece and putting them back in their places. He looks over his jewellery and notices some of its missing. He stops humming and looks puzzled.  

In the same room, the Queen continues humming her own tune. She’s dipping some bread into honey, looking very pleased with herself. She’s crumbling some bread to feed the weird ass birds next to her. 

The puzzled expression turns to a long stare. Q looks behind her and glares. 

Q: You look confused. Trouble counting all your gold? 

K: There’s fewer than before. 

Q: You’ve miscounted. 

K: I’ve double checked- 

Q: You call me a thief, then? 

K: Not at all. 

Q: then why ask me?  

(We either need a dialogue or music transition to get to this bit. Or just cut this out entirely) 

K (playfully) :Must you feed those wretched things? 

Q: soon enough you’ll hear them sing. 

Q (cooing at them): -a dainty dish fit for the king… (ahaha evil giggling to herself she’s crazay) 

  

K (happily): You and all your mutterings🥰 

He keeps looking at her with little hearts around his head. Q looks incredulously at him - is he that naive? 

Scene ends 

New scene 

Festival or ritual 

S watches through a crowd of dancers as they dress the other staff nearby. They’re still wearing the torc under their tunic. 

S starts mumbling under their breath. 

WIPPP 

S: sing my song of six pence. 

A waning enthral.  (Haha lunalae joke) 

Did the lustre of this gold 

Rust into a bronze? 

Watch desire turn to  

An indented call 

Something something 

1234 alll 

S watches on and makes eye contact with K. S panics and ducks behind someone. K looks suspiciously at S’s torc. Q notices and taps him on the shoulder. K looks away. 

Q: gaslighting there is no servant  

K: okay 

Someone placed a pie in front of K. K looks expectantly at the waiter. The waiter hands him the knife to cut the pie.  

birds. He cuts the pie open and shadows pour out.  

bird theme 

The shadows begin to form a dozen small shadows, but quickly form back into a large bird. B begins creeping towards K, cawing aggressively. K looks scared but concentrated.  

K takes several steps back and the light shines on his jewellery. B’s eyes sparkle and lung for the jewellery. K realises and steps back.  

K takes off his jewellery and tosses it to the crowd. S scrambles out from the crowd and makes a grab for the jewellery. 

B sees the torc from before and gets angry and vengeful. B attacks and mauls S. 

K watches in horror. K looks at Q and points a finger at her. Q makes a run for it. 

Q runs into the woods with gold in her hands. B sees the gold and follows her. Q is cornered. 

Q (nervous): S - Sing your song of sixpence- 

B: CAWWWWW (is a bird) 

Q throws gold at the bird. B is unaffected and creeps further forward. 

B kills Q. K watches from the outskirts, turns away and walks back home.  

K walks towards the crumpled form of S. S has their face cradled in their hands 

K looks at the torc and the bloody hands of S. He extends a hand to S and they look up. S reaches forward to grab the hand. 

✨🌸🌸✨🌸✨The End 🌸✨💅🌸🌸 

Musical Motifs for Q and S

[k00295122]

Storyboard

[k00295122]

Most of today was spent organising and assigning roles to people for research. I was assigned to do the animatic, Jon the research for the characters, Tyler the background and Sirenity the tools and decor. I also made Andy of things that may need to be included in the research to help find some key words

The storyboards we ended up going with were comprised of Tyler’s and my frames for scene 1, my frames for scene 2 and 3, and Jon’s for scene 4. Scenes 2 and 3 were longer than expected and having them both exist one after the other made the pacing awkward and tiring, so to save time we decided to have the scenes cut in between each other. I think this was the right move, but it made storyboarding that part difficult to balance. Scene 2 is very lyric heavy with a set rhythm while Scene 3 is dialogue heavy and needs a bit more freedom with the rhythm for comedic timing. I’ll have to work on this, but in the meantime I’ll be making the animatic for scenes 1 and 4

[k00295122]

I decided to do a bit more research into the clothing, hair and jewellery of the Halstatt culture era (500BC-450BC). I feel that while our beta designs were pretty and conveyed the characters well, the historical accuracy wasn’t there at all. We’ve been teetering on the medieval era aesthetics wise and I think we need to bring us back a bit so you can clearly tell where the characters are. I separated the research into clothing styles, material and textures, hairstyles, jewellery and decorative patterns used. Because halstatt culture often marries outside of their clan, I had an idea for the Queen’s design. The Queen could be a person from the trading countries near Halstatt, such as Ancient Rome. So I made an extra research sheet for her specifically from Ancient Rome. I shared this information with my team when it came to designing the characters.

We went back and forth about art styles as well. I think that something from Atlantis would be the best way to go, and Tyler suggested we try a studio Ghilbi style.

I think the Atlantis art style is equal parts cartoony and edgy, which is similar to the tone of the script. That being said, I think the flowing hair and shadowy form of the bird would clash with the sharp corners of the Atlantis art style. There should be a more whimsical and loose look to our work.

Tyler likes studio Ghibli for the painterly backgrounds. The soft colours and texture would fit in the idea of a nursery rhyme or story book, which is another element we want to include in our work. It’s almost a Brothers Grimm approach to telling a story, and a painterly would reflect that.

I think Tyler has a point, but studio ghibli feels too soft and comfortable for the story we’re trying to tell. We found a good medium between the two style - Hercules. It has bright in colours, a cartoony but sharp style that you can take seriously. The characters are expressive and theatrical, which matches the musical genre we have. I think this is our best option

[k00295122]

We’ve covered our research for the backgrounds, tools and jewellery. In the mean time, I’ve been figuring out how to phrase scenes 2 and 3. Originally, I was going to have a line of a song, a long instrumental gap for dialogue and then another lyric, but I found th pacing was awkward and tiring. It also switched up the r settings a lot and made it hard to follow. I’ve decided instead to cut between the scenes at the start, establishing that both scenes are happening at the same time and introducing the characters in a way that feels tidier than the previous plan. It also lets me edit the frames to mirror each other and continue each characters movements as a kind of transition form scene to scene. It’s much more interesting visually and makes it easier to follow.