PREMISE
INTERIM CRIT
NOAH GREENHALGH
• Idea One – Develop my Character Design Project.
• Idea Two – “Safety Dream” A short animation based off of a conversation
I had with my dad about anxiety.
EARLY • Idea Three – Working with Music.
IDEAS • Idea Four – Living with anxiety. An animation about how normal tasks
can be made very difficult when mixed with anxiety.
• Idea Five – My Gender Identity. And animation showing my experiences
with my gender identity.
• When I started to think about making a short film about my gender
identity, my mind immediately tried to think of ways that I could
symbolise my story with metaphors and narratives that were a less
direct way of telling my story and without it becoming too personal.
• The idea I fixated on was the idea that a character was trapped in a lab
and forced to conform to a stereotypical feminine appearance, but they
GENDER IDENTITY end up escaping the lab and are free to be who they want to be.
• The issue I had with this idea was that I continuously found myself stuck,
my story had a 'and then, and then, and then' quality, and I couldn't
simplify the message of my story into a sentence, I couldn't really figure
out what message I really wanted to convey with this idea, and I hoped
that trying to draw out what was in my head would help, but I couldn't
organise my ideas very well.
INFLUENCE MAP – THE LAB
INFLUENCE MAPS – THE L AB
INFLUENCE MAP – STYLE INFLUENCES
THE FIRST
D R AW I N G S
I wanted to look at chrysalises, as
Phil suggested that butterflies and
chrysalises would be a good
metaphor when discussing gender
identity. However, I started to
fixate on the idea of a character
being trapped in a lab, so I started
sketching out concepts for the
character. At this point in time I
wasn;t very happy with anything I
was drawing, but this was most
likely due to having low confidence
in my story.
EA R LY EX P LORAT IO N
• I was struggling with the story
of my animation, so I tried to
visualise my lab/experiment idea
by drawing a small comic
expressing that the character
can change into different things,
but was not allowed to change
into anything other than what
the screen tells them they can
change into. I ended up using
this cute style of drawing later
on in my designs as Alan said
that they have a more relatable
look and that people watching
will feel more sympathy for the
character.
F U R T H E R E X P LO R AT I O N
• I drew this picture when I was
really struggling with what I
wanted the animation to look
like, so I just drew whatever I
was picturing in my head. This
page is a little chaotic, but it
helped me to realise that I
needed to look into the basic
shape of my character rather
than trying to go into too much
detail too soon, which was one
of the reasons why I was getting
stuck.
T H UM B NA I LS
• As I was struggling so much with how I
wanted my character to look, and also
trying to develop my story into
something that made sense, I drew a
page of thumbnails to explore basic
shapes and different ways of designing
the main character. When I showed
these drawings to Alan, I explained that I
was finding it difficult to convey the
message of not wanting to conform to
mainstream expectations, and he
suggested that I try and think of a
different method/metaphor to base my
story on. He also suggested that I could
make an animation using one of the
characters from this thumbnail page in a
meta art vs artist type of story. The
drawing isn't happy with the artist
messing around with it, it's happy with
how it looks already, but the artist tries
to change that. The artist goes on to
fight the drawing in an attempt to alter
its appearance.
DEVELOPING THE
THUMBNAILS
• I created these designs alongside the
thumb-nails, I took a few of the
thumbnails I really liked, and
developed them a little. At this point I
still wasn't sure if I was going for a
very humanoid character or
something more basic. I started to
focus on the more basic/cute designs,
as I felt that they would fit in with the
story a lot better.
ART VS ARTIST INFLUENCE MAP
D E V E LO P I N G T H E M A I N
CHARACTER
• These are some drawings of the
main character interacting with
the artist. The artist draws the
character, but then rubs it out
and draws it again but with over
exaggerated feminine features.
The character is shocked and
redraws itself. I drew this out so
I could get a feel for the
character. I will be developing
the design throughout the
remainder of the project, but
these drawings definitely helped
me out when I was thinking
about what to write for the
script.
SCRIPT
INITIAL STORYBOARDS
STORYBOARD ONE
I drew out two storyboards exploring
how I could begin my animation. In the
first storyboard, the main character gets
half of their body rubbed out, this alarms
all of the other thumbnail drawings and
they flee the page, leaving the main
character by themselves. My worry with
this idea was that I would have to
animate all of the characters, but the
difficulty of this all depends on how I’m
going to animate them. For the side
characters, I could use either 2D or 3D
animation.
STORYBOARD TWO
In the second storyboard, the character
starts to get rubbed out, but quickly
grabs the legs of the character next to it
and flees, pushing past the other
characters and leaps onto a clean page.
My worry with this is that the main
character is supposed to be like able, and
the viewers should feel sympathy for
them.
CO NCEP T A R T
• This piece of concept art shows
the main character and the
artist interacting. I really want
my animation to have an ‘Art vs
Artist’ feel to it so I thought I’d
draw some concept art showing
that. I also included part of the
artists desk in the frame which
is something I’d like to explore
more in terms of what I would
like the composition to look
like.
JET PACK JONES PROGRESS
PROJECT COMMITMENT
• By the final crit presentation I aim to have completed:
• A Finalized story/script.
• Fully idealized character concepts with a character bible.
• Experimental tests using 2D Animation, focusing on character animation.
• Experimental test using 3D Animation, focusing on Toon Shaders, Planes, and
figuring out other methods of using 3D Animation to fit the aesthetic of my film.
• Basic Models of the characters in my film.
• A finished storyboard.
• A finished Animatic.
