Week 6 - Brainstorming (5/7)

     Hi everyone! By now, I can confidently say that I have learned a LOT over the course of this project. We are a little past halfway in, and I think I have a good grasp over animating—the tools, tricks to make the process smoother, and creative ideas. At the beginning of my blog posts, I had talked about my timeline. After becoming comfortable with animating (which I have, in fact, done), I would start incorporating very short storylines into my work, so that by the end, I’d have a quick, meaningful video. Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to start putting it all together.

    I started off by watching a few videos with storylines to ‘get in the groove’ and maybe spark some ideas. I would like to personally acknowledge my mother since she has been reminding me to take this step for the past couple of weeks. Keep in mind that although these videos are short, they were made by pros and took months. What I am planning to make will be nowhere near this quality.

Aren't they adorable? Especially the button one.

I also did some research on tips & tricks to help with storytelling and animating. I used these (and will continue to use these) while thinking of ideas. Even though this article is made for teachers, I found it especially helpful for myself. Here’s what I read:

        1) Define a clear purpose. You will get lost without a goal, so think of a theme and an objective early on, so you can build off on it. Additionally, having a purpose can help you define your audience and tailor your animation toward them. For example! If you are making a video about bullying for children, establish the lesson about bullying before you start creating the actual story itself, and make your storyline simple and easy to understand.

After reading this, I did decide to figure out a theme for my animation by the end of the week!

         2) Paint the scene. Before you start throwing your reader into a plot, show off the background! Meaning—where it is, when it is, what originally led up to the event! This keeps the reader from getting lost right off the bat.

See this video named MAN? The very first few seconds are dedicated to the background! Look how simple it was to give your story a short introduction.

         3) Place yourself in the shoes of your audience. If you really want to know if your animation will be worth watching, become an actor for a couple minutes and pretend you are an audience member. Stories produce many hormones and neurotransmitters in your brain, including dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. So see if you indeed feel happy, empathetic, or amused!

       As I have gone over two very different ways of animating in the past month, I decided to combine the two when making a storyline. My animations will be like the videos of me dancing, but instead of music and dance moves, I will be inserting myself as a character in the story. (At least, that is my plan).

       So what is my theme? (I am aware, Mr. Perlman, that a theme is a lesson about the universe, but I will be calling the overall idea "theme" because I have no other words to use for it.) I was thinking something like the story of life. The birth of something, growing old, and death. This would produce a lot of empathetic feelings, especially in the death part.

     A general idea I have to work around this theme is to have the main characters be me and a bird-like blob of some sort. It will be bird-like since I want it to be hatching out of an egg in my hands. I am terrible at drawing realistically, so a blob character will be fun to work with.

Maybe something super simple like this??

Well then--bye!

-Pelin

Works Cited:

“5 Tips to Use Storytelling in Teaching with Animation.” F. Learning Studio, 9 July 2020, www.flearningstudio.com/tips-storytelling-teaching-with-animation/. 

I commented on: Rachel L, Hailey A, and Juliet S's posts.