Initial feedback video- first film draft (old narrative)

After putting together the first part of my initial rough cut, I showed the clip to a couple of members of my target audience. The first person I asked was Flynn, who is 7, and the second James who is 14. Both gave me useful feedback as to what I needed to improve on. The draft that I showed them did not include the re-written narrative, which meant that the storyline was not clear to them. Now that I have addressed this and added more sound effects I think I will receive a more positive reaction from feedback.

Name ideas for cat, puppy and film title

The characters within my short animated film need names which is why I created a few lists of possible names. As the cat character is very posh, tidy I tried to find names which sound 'posh' and innocent. The names for the puppy I wanted to be more cute and fun.

Potential Cat names:
Molly
Coco
Kitty
Millie
Angel
Bella
Cleo
Sadie
Chloe
Princess

Potential Puppy names:
Scout
Bear
Cody
Archie
Buddy
Barney
Charlie
Murphy
Bailey
Buster

Film name:

Coco & Buddy

An unwelcome surprise

A tale of 2 pets

It’s my home!

Welcome home

Welcome to the Robinson Family

After asking some of my target audience I decided on the names Coco and Buddy as I felt that had a nice ring to it and the names really suited the personalities of the pets. I also decided that these would also be suitable as the actual title of the film as it is short and memorable such as 'Tom and Jerry' and 'Rhoobarb and Custard'.

Shot Types used in my animation

shot types on Prezi

Just like live action films, animated films use a variety of shot types to portray different scenes and emotions. I have put together a presentation explaing why I have used certain shots within my animation.

track test 1 export

After working on the first part of my soundtrack I decided to create a short clip. The music playing in the first pasequence (photos on the wall) I created using the program SoundTrackPro, and the rest is from a copyright free source. I think the sound effects work really well and have been timed right.

Further expression testing

Mind map of ideas for a pampered cat

At first I was a little unsure as to what I could include in a sequence to show a pampered cat so I decided to make a small mind map for inspiration. I have tried to include activities that are usually carried out by humans however could also be carried out by an animal in a comical way.

Further Audience Research- reactions

As my animation will be for anyone from the age of about 6, I need to think how exactly I am going to engage with my audience. The is a major issue as it will need to be suitable for both children and adults. The reaction that I would like to achieve is that of laughter over the comic elements and in a way the sense of sympathy towards both the characters (the cat as it is being excluded, and the dog as the cat is being mean to it). With the added scenes and new narrative in place I am hoping that I will achieve this. My short story animation will also include a story behind it which will be picked up on by all of my audience. The scenes including the cat watching TV will be recognized by the adults as how TV influences its viewers actions.

New narrative

I found after creating the first part of my animation that the narrative was just not clear enough so have come up with a few scenes which I am going to add in which will hopefully create a better story. The new scenes that I am going to add are:

• An establishing sequence which will introduce the cat as the only household pet which 'rules the roost'. This will be done with a sequence of shots showing the cat being pampered in different ways eg. being offered food and it turning its nose up until it is something which it likes or having its nails painted or hair brushed.
• A long shot to show that cats need are priority with its bed placed next to the fire place in the living room.
• After the dogs journey to the house at night the cat wakes the next day to find that her bed has been moved over and shoved in a corner and the dogs bed in her place.
• The cats face will be angry at the sight of the dog being the owners new favourite pet- this will be shown in a close up shot.
• Now that the dog is the owners new best friend the cat tries to think of ways to get rid of him. The cat is watching TV on the owners lap on night and sees hammer throwing on the olympics so gets an idea when the dog follows her outside.
• The sequence of the cat watching the TV and getting an idea is repeated 2 more times afterwards which leads to scenes of the dog being taken out with the bins, and it running into a glass door.
• Each day the cat also moves its bed back to its original place, but the dogs bed always ends back up there.

First attempt

I am quite pleased with how my first attempt at how my actual finished product turned out. There are some issues with lighting in some scenes as not all the shots were filmed on the same day, even though the camera was set to the same settings there were some differences. I did work on some of these scenes and adjusted the contrast, brightness and colour hues to get them to about the same lighting. This was quite time consuming though as I had to edit each clip separately. The main issue was that the narrative is still not clear enough which is why I am going to re-think how I can achieve this.

Expressions development

After constructing the short animatic of expressions, I found that I still needed to work on really making the expressions 'big' and exaggerated.  The expression which I feel which needed the most work and that I will make use of in my animation, is the angry face. At the moment in my drawings only the cats eyes and mouth moves however for a more dramatic effect, I think more of its face needs to move. One of the things which I could add to the cats angry face is blood shot eyes and/or steam coming out of the cats ears as this is a very conventional cartoon feature. 

Facial expression testing

Another issue which became apparent whilst watching my first draft of my short animation was that the expressions of the cat during the close ups needed to be more animated and sometimes varied. To really engage with the viewer the cats expression needs to clearly show what it is feeling and what it might do next. I decided to make a short test sequence for a number of different expressions to see how I can get the cats face to move. I think some of the shots worked quite well, however others need a little more work to make them more exaggerated and cartoon-like.

First attempt at opening scene

After many hours and hundreds of drawings, I have finally finished the majority of the first half of my animated short story. I roughly put the first 40-50 seconds worth of clips into FinalCut and edited them a little (no soundtrack at this point). I then asked a friend who had not seen any of my work and did not know the narrative of the animation to watch what I had created. Their reaction was that they really liked the actions and they did laugh at the funny moments even though there was no sound. The only problem that they had was that they didn't know that the cat was already an existing pet and that the puppy was a new addition. For this reason I have decided that I will add a short sequence to the start of the story featuring a car arriving at the house at night and then a hand opening the car door to reveal a pet carrier. The story will then continue as I had originally story boarded it.