For my FMP I had to choose 3 themes from a list of 6 themes, the themes were; Evolution, Destruction, Culture, Identity, Time and Future. The themes that I chose were Evolution, Destruction and Time, after choosing these themes I had to develop them, I thought about what I could do that is related to the theme and how I would produce it, for example if it’s stopmotion or 2D. First I researched different definitions of the themes, after I made a rough story followed by character and environment ideas.
My first theme was Evolution, first i researched different definitions of evolution, these ranged from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to growing to maturity, after I researched different definitions i thought i would choose four and make a short animation based on the definition but in a different animation style, such as zoetrope, claymation, 2D, 3D. from this my plan was a follows;
Zoetrope – physically make a zoetrope of Charles Darwin giving a thumbs up with one of his quotes, “its not the strongest of a species that survives , nor the most intelligent that survives, but the one most adaptable to change”.
Claymation – use the lyrics of the animated series of evolution “when some alien cells starts to mutate and swell say hello to evolution”, and make with polymer clay a cell that divides and mutates different features, such as spikes.
2D – 8 bit game style characters being used to evolve into a stranger creature, with “however is many video games evolution can be a group of creatures fusing together to for a single stronger form” as narration.
3D – model and redesign my stop motion character in maya and develop him into his teen/adult form, with these I will reference Digimon with its “Digivolution”, with the definition of evolution “evolution can also be growing to maturity”.
Next I would design characters for each short animation, I researched Charles Darwin so that I could draw line art of him in photoshop to print off for the zoetrope, I next researched different types of cells and sketched and developed different designs, for 2D I designed ‘Bunny slimes’ and ‘Jackalope slimes’ based on several types of video games such as Terraria and Dragon Quest, for 3D I resumed my old designs and elaborated on them from feedback I received from my stop motion unit, and also designed an older version of it where he would metamorphosise from his from form into his teen/adult form.
My second idea was Destruction, with this I thought of showing an already destroyed town/city in ruins that would pan/zoom to some rubble where a plant would be ‘destroying’ the rubble to grow, my inspiration for this was another perspective, I chose to do this because nature can also be a destructive force.
My final idea was Time, for this i stared with researching things that showed the progression of a lot of events but in a short amount of time, such as the Futurama episode where Fry find the fossil of his dog Scruffy, and my tutor recommended the 1960’s film Time Machine, from these i though about doing a reverse time-lapse , with this i thought of a sad emotion story of a dog and its owner, from this i decided to start with the grave of the own with the dog next to it remembering, in reverse, of its time with its owner until the point where its owner took it in from the streets, and then back to the grave where a relative of the owner would take to dog home.
From these three ideas I chose Evolution, however of about two weeks of development later I discussed with my client/tutor about changing my final idea due to various complications and how difficult it would be to animate in 4 weeks, I changed my final idea to Time what would be produced in Photoshop and PremierPro
Animations and Research 