Popsickle Add, Midtyear Exam and Animation Jam

In week 4 we had storyboard with Tod Polson (www.todpolsonart.blogspot.com) who has been affiliated with the school for a good amount of years, especiallly helping out at the 3rd year bachelor films.
At first we were to make a 30 second animatic (or 25 since the last 5 should be reserved for a logo) for a Popsickle commercial, based on some work Tod already had done: http://todpolsonart.blogspot.com/2010/02/space-sicle.html
I made mine with Nicholaj and it ended up like this:



We made a another board of mastershots over our characters from "taste," but it seems the drawings is lost for the moment being..

In week 5 we had a midyear test exam, which basically just meant a week of animation without teacher. The assignment was to make a 5 second animation with the pink panther standing up and try to open a door without luck. The background was given to us.

Pink Panther Midyear Exam Animation from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Week 6... Now that was something. The school had a visit from 6 different directors which were to make 2 shorts each, with a group consisting of both the first and second year character animators and computer graphic artists. All the movies can be seen here http://animwork.dk/en/news.asp?AjrDcmntId=451
I was on Pritt Tender's movie. Basically he just threw out some ideas, designs and overall story, and then let us create all the fun and weird stuff that were going to happen and the ending. The two movies were to be connected to one, but otherwise we mostly worked in two groups, both using the first day to come up with things and make a storyboard and then the rest of the week to animate. The movie ended up as this:



I created the last scene. Since us 1st years hadn't been taught Tv Paint at that point, I created my scene on paper and then two second year students cleaned it up in Tv Paint. I think it has a certain charm in rough, so I'll post it as I made it aswell:

Scene 110 from Niels Dolmer on Vimeo.

Basically I thought this should be a contrast to the rest of the movie - a moment of a certain grace coming out of - and into a rather mad and surreal movie. If we've had two weeks I would have made it at least 15 seconds, I think its hard for the viewer to catch all the small ideas that was in it in just 10 seconds.

Week 2 - Character Design

In week 2 we had character Design with Julia Bracegirdle. She put alot of focus on alternative methods of character design, and alternative character designs. The week started out with alot of focus at shapes; hence the first thing we made was shadowplays. This one was made by me, Kenneth, Benny and the intern.



Eventually we got around to creating a set of characters based on the short story "Taste" by Roald Dahl (he also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). It is a rather curious story, and very well narrated since we received it in sound instead of text. You can read the story in very short format here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_(short_story) - if you don't want the ending spoiled then just read the two first parts.
While Julia suggested alternative methods to creating the characters, I really just felt like spitting out alot of different suggestions for the characters:

The characters physical appearance was not really described in the story, so we had alot of creative freedom with them - except for Richard Pratts lower lip and noose that was troughoutly and rather funny described when he tasted the wine. It was an easy decision to go for the monstrous Pratt. I think several of the Mikes would have worked, though in the end I thought that the one with big furrows on his forehead would suit Mikes unsecure and worried character best. My initial thoughts on Louise were that she should be the one we could feel sympathy for, since both Mike and Pratt was gambling about her. So the upper-second-from-the-left Louise was my first choice. However after a short discussion with my teacher I decided that I might as well just present all three of them as unsympatic characters, thus enabling me to do whatever I wanted with them. I also played with the idea of giving Louise a sort of smoky form, since she smokes in the story, but it didn't work well enough. The final characters ended like this: