Introduction

This blog post is for creating notes of my initial ideas for the Creative Project brief assignment.

In the previous session, I came up with some initial thoughts about things I could produce for the brief and this session was dedicated to helping form those initial thoughts into more considered and fleshed-out ideas.

This is that blog post:

Initial Creative Project Ideas and Thoughts.

Brainstorm

My three ideas that I thought of last week were as follows:

• 1 – A 2D animated short film with a science fiction or horror theme.
• 2 – A traditional short film, made with cameras. For this, I would focus on less fantastical genres and create a film grounded in real life.
• 3 – A mixture of the first two ideas. I would film a background and animate 2D characters into it.

The main focus of this brainstorming task was to review my ideas from last week and ask the questions – ‘Do you still like the idea?’ and ‘How can you develop the idea?’ and furthermore:

What genre is the project?

What is the story you want to tell?

What is your expertise?

Review of Idea 1

I still like my first idea – 2D animation is my expertise. I particularly enjoy science fiction, and would choose it as the genre of this short film if I were to go with this idea. I could easily develop this idea by creating some mood boards to expand on the visual theme, and get into specific sci-fi sub genres. The short film would likely focus on one character and their short journey, or perhaps two characters in a conversation.

Review of Idea 2

I also still like my second idea – I have been looking at getting into more traditional film. This idea is slightly harder for me to develop, because I have no initial ideas for a narrative, characters, or genre. It is also not my expertise. The story would be lighthearted or comedic.

Review of Idea 3

I like my third idea – I think it would be interesting to create a short film mixing animated characters with filmed footage. I also don’t have many more ideas to add to this, but I can’t imagine that it would be hard to develop the idea by coming up with a cartoon character design and locations where I could film the backgrounds. The story here would be simple, and focus on two characters in a conversation. I’m not sure of the genre but I think it could be fun to mix characters from different genres or themes – for example, a pirate character and a robot character.

add a brainstorming mind map

Moodboards

The task at the end of the lesson was to create some moodboards for potential ideas that you may use.

Here is a moodboard I made for my first idea, the sci-fi themed 2D animation. As you can see, it focuses on aliens, planets, and space travel – at first, I picked images that were appealing to me and once I had put them together on one page It presents a more defined visual theme.

Here is another moodboard which expands upon the first, conceptualising what the main character of this story might look like. I used some images of astronauts and deep-sea divers because of the space exploration theme of the story idea.

Synopsis

This section of the blog post is for the synopsis of my film, summarizing the first idea that I developed with the moodboards. I have included this synopsis in my proposal and pitch presentations as well.

In my 2D animation, a space explorer called Marco finds himself lost in an uncharted area of outer space. His spaceship is hit by asteroids, and he is forced to land on an unknown planet. While searching the planet, Marco trips and falls into what he thinks is a hole in the ground but is in reality an enormous living creature that stretches for miles below the planet’s surface.

He falls for a long time, past countless objects: bones, plants and machine parts that all mysteriously ended up inside of the hole. All of this is evidence of more life, but where? There are no people or aliens to be found inside the hole. It finally dawns on Marco that the only living thing on the planet is a giant alien that eats everything it comes across, and that he is inside of it.

Marco wonders if he will be digested like all of the other things inside. Looking down, he is stared back at by an eye below him inside of the creature. The eye gets closer and closer until Marco stops falling. He floats in the air above the eye. It asks him “What do you want?” and he replies “I want to go home”. Marco is released by the eye, he falls past it and through a portal at the bottom of the hole.

Marco floats in space above the planet. His spaceship is repaired in front of him, his compass points to home. He gets inside the ship, marks the alien planet on his navigation screen and flies away, leaving it behind him for now.

Conclusion

Generating some initial ideas and concepts with moodboards has definitely helped me to refine those ideas into a full concept for the Creative Media Project brief. Furthermore, creating a synopsis was important not just for the pitch – to help the viewers understand the plot of my animated film – but also for myself to make it clear what I want to happen in the film so that I can create clear storyboards and further design work.