Idea Parts 3 - 5.5

Since the pitch, something has become clear. My fellow traditional animation students do not want to do a fun piece. They want to stick with metaphorical work. Fair enough, but this does mean I'm going it alone.

This does mean I've had to rethink my ideas, and take away one character.

I bounced some ideas off a wall, and came up with the scraggly moggy from the second idea, dancing to a music box. But it just wasn't what I wanted.

Then something happened involving a platypus in a one man band, albeit briefly...

*Then* I was hit with a guinea pig, square in the face. And it hurt, as it would do if you were hit in the face with a guinea pig.

The Pitch: A guinea pig finds a human-sized drum kit and starts to play. But he can't reach the much desired crash cymbal. So he devises a chain reaction using snare drums and the bass pedal. The guinea pig bounces off the pedal, flies through the air, but is just short of the cymbal. Instead, he lands among the drums, causing the entire kit to collapse on top of him. When he emerges from the rubble, he spots the cymbal in reach, and is able to hit it with his paw.

But why should this cymbal make a crashing sound? That would simply be... nice... Instead, when the guinea pig hits the cymbal, it makes a disappointing squark.

Visually, I'm going to mix 2D with CG, and I'm going to digitally edit the piece. The drum kit's going to be CG, possibly 2D planes in Maya or make it in After Effects, and the editting is mostly to colour the character and give it a real finished look.

I feel good about this piece, and I can't wait to try Maya. I'd love to be able to play around with a bit more CG stuff. Or get to know After Effects a bit better. Either way, it's going to be a good year!