Christmas E-card 2013

After dissecting the brief, I planned how to approach the project, marking out mile stones and my approach.

So I looked at ;synonyms, quotes, movie, words associated with Christmas. I then drew up a mind map for Christmas.

I searched the internet for the origin of Christmas. Resulting in investigation into Pagan religions.

 Among the theories of the origin of Christmas I found John Rush's idea that much of the Christmas tradition comes from the old shamanic people of Siberia.
The amanita muscaria mushroom, is said to be the main inspiration for Santa's colour, why we hang decorations on Christmas trees, why Santa comes down the chimney, why Rudolf's nose maybe red and also why we put presents around the base of a tree. If you wan to learn more follow this link   ( http://www.livescience.com/25731-magic-mushrooms-santa-claus.html )

I began playing around with how to represent this information within an animation by storyboarding.

I felt that mushrooms, reminded me of flying saucers so decided to make them fly.

As elfs are Christmassy and are often depicted to live within mushrooms I decided to add an elf that could pilot the mushroom space ship. This also reminded me of talks by Terence McKenna in which he discus's the machine elf's which he had made contact with through the use of psychedelics. The flying mushroom ships would chase after a sledders until they caught up and latched themselves onto the sledders head morphing him into Santa Clause.

While researching folklore in regards to mushrooms I came across the myths of Fairy rings (also known as Elf circles.) Which are mushrooms that grow in a circle.  Associated with being a portal to another dimension as well as making an intruder fall victims to the illusions of the mystic beings.

With this in mind I knew I could now use a fairy ring to transform a man into Santa.  

Storyboard to music

Character Development
Elf design, taking quick sketch's of an elf like friend of mine provided me with a starting point for development.

Elf

Deer

Sled

Mushrooms

And shaman symbols

Santa

Man

Final face was based off a tear drops

Backgrounds

The scene was structured in regards to tear drops.

This then was based off a abstract of a happy face. curving up like a smile.

Final storyboards

Final Animation

  Contextual work 

Sketch Book work 

IDI Awards Intoductions to Categories 2013

I began by trying to grasp the categories. I did this by collecting quotes and words related to each category

From the information gathered on these categories I brain stormed what I associated with them.

With that done I filtered down the ideas to those with a potential for further development.

Now I started to visually represent and experiment with how these ideas might be made into an animation.

I now reviewed the ideas I had and picked the one I felt was the strongest. The idea is based of off a quote by Stephen Gardiner  "The exterior cannot do without the interior since it is from this, as from life, that it derives much of its inspiration and character."  This quote was originally in relation to interior design. The quote itself reminds me of the Ouroboros symbol (As the snake eats its on tail in an endless cycle of creation and destruction).

I came up with an idea involving a snake like creature eating a bunch of houses and then splitting open to reveal his in side and the interior of the houses within. I played around with storyboarding the idea to see how it could be represented.

I went back to brain storming on my idea.  I was playing around with giving the snake creature the head of a human. To represent a designer consuming all the other houses he has seen and reproducing variations that in turn re-influence the world of design. In a feed back loop. . I considered whether or not to use the earth as a centre for the piece.

Back to story boarding then.  Considering camera angles and position this time.

Considering what to place in the centre of the piece. Debating whether to use anything.

Now it was time to make a story board using the template I was given.

Here is each of the images in the storyboard up close.

I had debated using the Mayan calendar as the circle in the centre of the piece as the piece as a whole was reminding me of the Mayan god Q'uq'umatz also known as the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl  (known in English as the Feathered Serpent  )

I also entertained the idea of using a cross section of a human head in the centre of the piece

 Colour and Style

I have chosen to pick my colour scheme and style from the following pieces.

Music

Music wise I was looking at the soundtrack to the game "Rayman" on the PS1.

I love the track  Finding A Way Outta Here    It has a mystical feel to it.

When planning my animatic I chose to break the piece down into the most fundamental shapes and process's for achieving the shapes needed.

To get a feel for how to animate the piece I made an animatic. out of my storyboard.

Animatic

Final Animation 

My animation was used in the IDI Awards 2013.

 For my complete work on the IDI Awards Brief check out the following Albums

Contextual Studies
Sketch Book