Ordinarily I like to show viewers my finished animations first then talk about the behind the scenes stuff afterwards in this blog so this will be a new experience for both you and I.
Unfortunately there will be spoilers. Stop reading if you would prefer to see the finished work first and come back here after my entry is complete to find out how it all unfolded.
House keeping out of the way, let's dive in...
Inspiration
The contest is about New Year's Resolutions. The kinds of things life coaches and motivational speakers love. Quite a few of them base their philosophies around the teachings of Ninja. GoAnimate has two Ninja themes... can you see where this is going?
I had the idea of someone saying to a friend as their resolution "This year I want to be more Ninja."
I listen to a lot of Kevin Smith's podcasts (Kevin's a well known film writer/director whose career began with the 1994 film Clerks). Shows like Hollywood Babble On and Smodcast where it's just two people swapping stories and bouncing jokes off each other. Which is how I imagine my entry will be.
It starts out with the above mentioned statement and then the person's more cynical friend chimes in with their interpretation of what the first friend means by 'Ninja'.
So my initial concept is to have two friends discussing the idea of 'being more Ninja' inter cut with scenes of Ninjas acting out some of their ideas.
The Script - First Draft
Thinking about what these two friends say for about an hour I had their opening lines clear in my mind:
Friend 1: This year I want to be more Ninja.I actually had much more than that sorted in my head with friend 2 counter pointing that friend 1 should have said he wanted to be more like a camera - which won't make much sense to you... yet.
Friend 2: You want to be more Ninja? What? You want to hide in the shadows and kill people?
Sometimes when I have a fairly clear idea of a script in my head trying to write it down can really slow down the development process. A quicker way to get your first draft done is to just perform it. Yes, I said perform it.
Now you could just record your voice but I'd also planned to write this blog post. I recorded myself performing my first draft as a video so you could see the ideas forming as I say them out loud for the very first time.
Fair warning, the video below is rough, recorded on my camera phone, with several jump cuts to remove lengthy pauses and one or two minor ideas that went nowhere. I also don't perform to the camera. In the video I'm playing two characters talking to each other and switching between the mindset of each by turning my head.
The important thing is not how it looks, it's about getting the ideas out quickly. So pay no attention to all the weird thinking/acting faces I'm making!
Note that this is not my final script. To me it's not funny enough and needs more refinement and ideas injected into it. Plus some of the ideas didn't come out or play the way I intended.
From here I'll transcribe what I said into an actual written script and start to revise it with additional ideas and a few visual jokes for the scenes that act out what the characters are saying.
However I wanted to show you this part of the process as a useful tool for those of you that aren't 'writers'. There's no rule that says you have to actually write a script - especially if you're only making films by yourself and don't need to give anyone else a script.
At this stage that is as far as I've gone with my entry. Hopefully by the next post I'll have my script done, storyboard finalized and perhaps even started to animate.
Part 2 will be posted next week.
Hey, I didn't want to come by until had I finished my entry and published it. That has been done. So here, I am.
ReplyDeleteHowever, your animations usually delight me in some unexpected way and I have decided that since there are spoilers I am going to wait until I have watched your animation before reading the 3 blog posts.
"I'll be back!"
With any luck my entry will be out this week along with the third and final part to this series of posts. Don't expect anything too ground breaking or delightful.
DeleteI mainly wanted to enter for the deadline to try get something finished that wasn't a business animation.
I'm fairly certain many of the newer GoAnimators (yourself included) are going to easily surpass what I do... not that I'm not trying to be great. Just been a while since I did anything to really talk about.
Well, if you've seen my comment then you know I enjoyed your entry. It was neat to watch you developing the script as well. I usually do it all in my head, I get a vague idea what I want to do and then get a start and finish and fill in the middle. Do you always record your scripts on camera in the early stages. As to your last comment above: "How's the Batman coming along?"
ReplyDeleteActually I rarely record my scripts in this way. I usually resort to this technique if I'm on a roll with my ideas but I don't have time to sit down and write it out. This way I get the script idea out in the time it takes to speak it... and no self editing just the raw idea.
DeleteSorry to say Bat Storm's going nowhere at the moment. I'm just not into using GoAnimate at the moment. I'm a little burned out by all the business animations I did last year. Plus I really want to start some non-goanimate animation projects.