Bale rant Animation process: 'Planning' - 1/2

PLANNING PART 1

When Spline Doctors presented this challenge I got pumped right away with the audio clip and the idea of being able to have feedback and critique from them… awesome!! so I put some extra hours after work to start thinking on how I would approach this animation challenge…

AUDIO:
I came out with the “swearing at the computer” concept, inspired by the amount of times 3dsmax crashed on me at work and at home… hehehe… so I opened the audio editing software I have (Adobe Audition) and start trying things out with the audio parts that I could find more interesting from the 4 min Bale rant… I also added a kind of “farm-ish” environment background sound, so the cuts of the parts I selected were blended with it.

Considering time for the animation (I didn’t want to do more than 15 seconds) and trying not to pick the same concept or audio of other contestants… this is what I came out with:

( http://www.danimating.com/AUDIO_ANIM_03.wav )

THUMBNAILING AND CONCEPT:

I tried to listen to the edited audio as much as I could at work and at home… and tried to sketch the concept or the situation of the character on the scene… try to find the right pose or inspiring facial expressions, composition, staging of things on the screen, etc etc.

I also did a break down of the audio on paper so I could relate better with attitudes and the character performance through the shot. At this point I had a list of a few questions and answers for myself to make this process easier for me… this are the ones that had a more relevant role on the animation:

Where is the character?

- He is inside of his farm house working on his computer. It’s a nice day around 11am.

What was the character doing before the shot?

- He was working on the computer (typing, browsing, doing taxes, checking or paying bills, etc) and suddenly everything started to slow down (jerky mouse pointer, webpages taking too long to load, the little sand clock appeared for too long on the screen).


What is the character’s personality overall?

- He is an average farmer on his 40’s, grumpy most of the time… tired and stressed for the routine of dealing with a computer which is the object he doesn’t feel the most comfortable with.