The first stage - the project proposal

Hallo! Just a quick update to say what I'm up to with my project. The first official deadline has passed now (yesterday, in fact). It was only a small one - worth 5% of my total mark - but it required a lot of thinking! Before my project could officially go ahead I was required to write and submit a proposal that has to be approved by my tutor. It is generally more of a formality, as very few people will request to do something that would be rejected; it is mainly to get us to think thoroughly about our projects before ploughing ahead with insufficient planning, as it required us to detail what the project is about, why we are doing it, what it will involve, in what time span we plan to get it done, and what research we are going to undertake to support it.

The good thing is my supervisor likes my idea, so I didn't have to change it before writing my proposal! I'm also excited about the research phase, which I didn't think I would be. I've chosen some texts and websites that are both valuable and interesting (this list is not exhaustive of everything I have included in my submission):

• Acting for animators by Ed Hooks, in which he uses classic acting theory to describe how we can improve our character animation;
• Cartoon animation by Preston Blair - an older book about traditional animation with awesome drawings of poses and cycles and methods for animation;
• fxguide has new articles almost every day from industry professionals on all things film and 3D;
• Digital-Tutors has hundreds of video tutorials on software, subjects and methods (Teesside University currently has a group subscription to this);
• and 3D World magazine has a variety of articles from theory and art to specific tutorials, so I will be using some of these to strengthen my work, too.

I mentioned in my last post that my piece will be character animation based with simple block environments; here is a student project (also from Teesside University) I found online that shows the kind of look I'm after - clean, polished and understandable:

I've cut down my lengthy script to more reasonable length now, so after I've made a more thorough schedule I should be able to start storyboarding. Hooray!

Caitlin :)