Orchard Pig - Update

I feel I fallen behind with my blogging for this module. I was meant to be doing some research into cardboard models for the next time we were meeting but late on the Sunday night we had a conversation as a group and figured we all had really hectic weeks so we had no choice but to bring our meeting forward to the Monday morning. I hadn't completed my research by this point so had very little to show at the meeting. The only thing brought to the table from any of us was a clay pig so we spent the morning making more clay models for our animation. I hate to sound so negative but I am really questioning the quality of what we are producing. We have established that none of us are good at using clay, I know that my animation skills are extremely limited and I don't get the impression that my team members have much experience with this either. I have said this before but I don't think we are playing to our strengths at all. 

These were the outcomes from the morning, I was making people at a festival which was very difficult, especially trying to make them stand up. The clay started to dry really quickly and the different body parts kept falling off. I managed to make one of mine stand with a bit of support from the glass jar but it still looks very amateur. To make this work, I think the figures need to be simplified or characterised so they at least look uniformed. 

My clay models

Clay models by my team mates

I aired my concerns about this and suggested making the people out of card and make a little stand for them so they stand up. I feel like my teammates were already decided on the clay idea so I tried to think of a compromise. I thought about maybe making clay wellies as the base and cut out people. The wellies would hold the cut outs up. I printed some examples off the computer and mocked one up, although I said that the figures would be drawn by us. I know these shoes look more like Uggs than wellies but the idea is there. Using 2D images would also give us the option to use After Effects to animate this if the stop motion does not go as planned.

Writing up what we have done is just making me frustrated with this brief. I feel like we have very little focus on a full campaign and that this animation is taking up all of our time. I thought that by working with an illustrator and graphic designer our outcomes would be primarily 2D and paper based 3D. At the moment I can see us struggling to make an animation without the help of an animator or someone good at 3D modelling and I think it is an unnecessarily challenging and hard task when we have a stronger skills base between us that we could be working with. 

As the afternoon continued I suggested we make a plan of what all of us need to be getting on with. The tasks were divided up as follows:

Myself : Draw 5 figures for the animation, design and make the festival cup(s), set design ideas for animation, make the stop motion animation. 

Sophie : Draw 5 figures for the animation, design and make a set of three beermats, set design ideas for animation, make the stop motion animation.

Emma : Poster design, packaging design for festival pack. 

I think its good that we now have our own individual tasks to be getting on with, I am personally going to try and keep communication levels between us up to ensure that we aren't all going off at different tangents.